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ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, ANNAPOLIS. 



SOME HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS 



OF THE 



FOUNDING OF KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL 

AND ITS SUBSEQUENT ESTABLISHMENT AS 

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 

TOGETHER WITH 

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES 



OF 



THE VARIOUS PRESIDENTS FROM 1790-1894 

ALSO OF 

SOME OF THE REPRESENTATIVE ALUMNI 
OF THE COLLEGE 

y 

f- 

Compiled by Thomas Fell, Ph.D., LL. D. 



ANNAPOLIS 

1894 

t 



mm^mmmmmmmm 



34507 






PRESS OF THE FRIEDENWALD CO. 
BAI.TIMORE. 







KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL 

Annapolis, Md. 



'« 



KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL, ANNAPOLIS, MD. 

The First Public Free School on the North American 

Continent. 



BY WILLIAM STEVENS PERRY, D. D. Oxon., LL. D., D. C. L., BISHOP OF 
IOWA, AND HISTORIOGRAPHER OF THE AMERICAN CHURCH. 



The city of Annapolis, Md. — named for the Princess Anne, 
afterward Queen of England — is situated on an irregularly 
shaped peninsula at the mouth of the river Severn, nearly 
surrounded by the waters of the stream and those of the sea. 
The site was an ideal one, the country reaching back from the 
shore, — North, South, West, found here its mart for the 
exchange of the staple product of Maryland — tobacco — for 
the necessaries and luxuries of life. The open sea afforded 
the means of direct export and import, and the mercantile 
marine of all the world could ride at anchor in the harbor, 
and load or discharge passengers or cargoes at the very 
wharves. It is the harbor which made Annapolis for years 
the chief port of the Province. For two centuries this 
favored spot has been the seat of government, proprietary, 
provincial, popular. Unique in its situation, fortunate in the 
very formation of its broken, undulating surface, this city of 
the Severn and the sea was not the creation of adventitious 
circumstances, but was planned, and perfected almost simul- 
taneously, by those whose was the taste and means needed 
for the work in hand. On the highest point of ground a 
circle with a radius of more than five hundred feet was laid 
out two centuries ago, within which the government buildings 
were to be erected. Westerly from this central elevation 
another circle was laid out for the church, and from these 



■■I 



C KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL. 

two centres the streets radiated in every direction — some 
parallel with the Severn, and others bisecting the long reach 
of meadows lying between the harbor and the creek and after- 
ward known as " Carrollton." On the removal of the seat of 
government from St. Mary's in 1694, the House of Burgesses 
was erected — a quaint little structure of brick, with massive 
walls and doors of oak and iron, still in excellent preserva- 
tion. This building, evidently intended for a refuge in case 
of hostile attack as well as for civic uses, is, without doubt, 
the oldest edifice in Annapolis to-day. The Church of St. 
Ann was erected in 1699, and shortly afterward the State 
House; and with these buildings for Ghurch and State the 
city of Annapolis was well begun. Early in the eighteenth 
century a royal charter was bestowed upon Annapolis by 
Queen Anne, through the offices of Governor Seymour. 
Vested with all the privileges and immunities of an English 
" city,'' there were attracted to this charming spot all the 
pomp and circumstance of a provincial capital. Here dwelt 
in stately homes, still beautiful after years of use and constant 
occupancy, the crown officials. Here met in the State 
House — for such it was called from the first — the Burgesses 
and the Council. Here lived the representative of the mon- 
arch, the royal Governor. Here lived the Commissary of 
the Bishop of London, in whose see the American colonies 
were comprised; or here, at least, when not personally resi- 
dent, the Commissary convened the clergy, sometimes in the 
State House and sometimes in St. Ann's, for the annual or 
occasional visitations. Here the Maryland and Virginia 
planters came with their wives and daughters to attend the 
races, the theatre, the assemblies and balls. Here were social 
clubs of every grade and name. Here French hair-dressers, 
perfumers, dancing-masters, and costumers ministered to the 
pleasure-loving citizens. Here, in homes with terraced lawns 
and gardens stretching to the sea or river, were housed the 
numbers of " fashionable and handsome women " whose 
charms are recorded by an English official, in the palmy days 
of Annapolis just before the Revolution. Here the Church 



KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL. 7 

was predominant, and the members of the Roman commu- 
nion had only a private chapel in the Carroll House at " Car- 
rollton," as their place of worship. Here, too, was the 
famous King William's School — the first public free school 
on the continent, and still maintained as St. John's College, 
the fourth existing collegiate institution in the land in point 
of age, and now claiming nearly two centuries of continuous 
life and educational work. 

In July, 1694, Francis Nicholson entered upon office as the 
royal Governor. The Assembly convened on Sept. 21, trans- 
ferred the seat of government from St. Mary's to Ann Arun- 
del Town at the mouth of the Severn, which was made a port, 
a mart, and a town. Of the public buildings ordered to be 
erected, the church is first named, and the Governor's propo- 
sition, that the poll taxes collected the year before, in Ann 
Arundel county, should be applied toward the building of the 
church, was approved without opposition. The first com- 
pleted legislation of this session was an "Act for the Advance- 
ment of Learning." The act itself is not extant, but Nichol- 
son promised to give £50 toward the building of the school 
and £25 per annum toward the master's support. Sir 
Thomas Laurence gave 5,000 pounds of tobacco, the current 
coin of the province, toward the building, and pledged 2,000 
lbs. per annum toward the master's stipend. The House of 
Burgesses voted 45,000 lbs. of tobacco toward the building. 
The members of the Council gave from 1,000 to 2,000 lbs. of 
the staple product of the country for this purpose, and 
among the subscribers to the master's salary we notice the 
name of that uncompromising Churchman, Edmund Ran- 
dolph, who gave iio sterling. It was with great earnestness 
and interest that these old Maryland Churchmen laid broad 
and deep the foundations of America's first public free school. 

The rector of St. Mary's (the Rev. Peregrine Coney, or 
Cony) was shortly afterward transferred to the new Ann 
Arundel Town. Here he was required to read matins and 
evensong daily ; and in the development of the new capital he 
was made a trustee of the public free school. This educa- 



8 KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL. 

tional enterprise was placed under the patronage of the king, 
whose name it was to bear, while the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury was made its chancellor. 

The earliest paper relating to the Church in Maryland pre- 
served among the MSS. at Lambeth Palace Library bears the 
date of Oct. i8, 1694, and is addressed to Tenison, Bishop of 
Lincoln, who, in Jan., 1694-5, was translated to the archiepis- 
copal see of Canterbury. This letter was signed by the sec- 
retary. Sir Thomas Laurence, in behalf of the Council, and 
by Speaker Robert Smith in behalf of the House of Bur- 
gesses, and was approved by the royal Governor. Referring 
to " their majesties' royal foundation now vigorously carried 
on in Virginia" — William and Alary College — this address 
to the archbishop-designate proceeds, " We have, therefore, 
attempted to make learning an handmaid to devotion, and 
founded free schools in Maryland to attend on their college in 
that colony." The Burgesses, Avho had at this session " es- 
tablished " the church, further profess as their " chiefest aim 
and end " in this business the " instructing our youth in the 
orthodox, preserving them from the infection of heterodox 
tenets, and fitting them for the service of Church and State 
in this uncultivated part of the world." In 1696 the Assem- 
bly convened in Annapolis, and the legislation of two years 
before was renewed. The school received the name of " King 
William's School." Its purpose was declared to be " for the 
propagation of the Gospel, and the education of the youth of 
the Province in good letters and manners." Two hundred 
pounds was voted for the building in the act providing for 
the erection of the church, and thus education and religion 
took root together in Annapolis ere the eighteenth century 
had begun. Mr. Alexander Gaddes was sent out by the 
Bishop of London to take the headship of the King William's 
School; but as the school building was still incomplete he 
was appointed a lay reader in All Saints' parish, Calvert 
county, and shortly afterward took a position as an under- 
master in the collegiate school at Williamsburg, Virginia. In 
1699 we have the testimony of the Rev. Hugh Jones, then 



KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL. 9 

incumbent of Christ Church, Calvert, to the effect that " Gov- 
ernor Nicholson has done his endeavors to make a town of 
Annapolis. There are about forty dwelling-houses in it, 
seven or eight of which can afford a good lodging and enter- 
tainment for strangers. There are also a State House and a 
free school built with brick, which make a great show among 
a parcel of wooden houses, and the foundation of a church is 
laid, the only brick church in Maryland." We learn from 
Ridgeley's "Annals of Annapolis" that this memorable 
Academy of King William was a plain building, containing 
both school-rooms and apartments for the master and his 
family. It stood on the south side of the State House on a 
lot given by Governor Nicholson. The building does not 
appear to have been ready for use until 1701. 

The action of the House of Burgesses was necessarily of a 
"petitionary" nature and was subject to revision at home. 
Delays attended the granting of appropriations by the Assem- 
bly, and the necessity for the royal approval of all its proceed- 
ings made the progress of " the first public free school in 
America" tedious. Even measures so likely to receive the 
warm endorsement of the authorities in England, as those for 
the furtherance of the Church and for Christian education, 
were often invalidated in consequence of some ill-advised, or 
at least incautious, expressions, judged by the crown lawyers 
as prejudicing the entire statute. Still the work was carried 
on, and we shall find abundant evidence of the immediate 
results for good of the first public free school of the land. 

At an Assembly held at Annapolis, July i, 1695, a " Peti- 
tionary Act for Free Schools "^ was passed, apparently with- 
out opposition. This act, after referring to the charter given 
to the College of William and Mar}^, in the neighboring 
province of Virginia, prayed for the establishment under the 
royal patronage of " a free school or schools, or place of study, 
of Latine, Greek, Writing and ye like," the design expressed 
being " ye Propagation of the Gospel and ye education of ye 
youth of this Province in good letters and manners." The 

' Vide Bacon's " Laws of Maryland " (Ch. 17), 1696. 



10 KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL. 

plan provided for " one master, one usher, and one writing 
master or scribe to a school, and one hundred scholars more 
or less." It was desired that the Archbishop of Canterbury 
should be the chancellor of this school, and, in fact, of all the 
schools founded in accordance with this act. The school 
established at "Ann Arundel Town upon Severn River " was 
named by the Assembly " King William's School." The 
Governor, Francis Nicholson, Sir Thomas Laurence, Bart., 
Cols. Robctham, Hutchins and Addison, of the Council, the 
Rev. Peregrine Coney, the first incumbent of St. Ann's, and 
a number of leading men of the Province were designated as 
trustees. This list contains the noted Maryland names of 
Cheseldyn, Coursey, Dorsey, Dent, Hewitt, Boothby, and 
others. The assent of the king to the incorporation of the 
rector, visitors and governors 'of the " Free School and 
Schools " was prayed for by the Assembly, and the town of 
Oxford, Talbot county, on the Eastern Shore, was selected as 
the site of the second school to be established. This supple- 
mentary legislation was intended to supersede and take the 
place of the act for free schools passed at St. Mary's, Sep- 
tember, 1694. In "The Historical Collections of the Ameri- 
can Colonial Church" (IV., Maryland, p. 33) is a carefully 
prepared contemporary account of this legislation, evidently 
intended for transmission to the authorities at home, which 
reads as follows: 

"And that a perpetual succession of Protestant divines of 
the Church of England may be provided for the propagation 
of the true Christian religion in the said colony. His Excel- 
lency hath, by the consent of the Council and Burgesses in 
Assembly, promoted a law, vesting a power in certain Trus- 
tees for erecting one Free School in each county, one of 
which is already begun at Annapolis, and is to be endowed 
with £100 sterling pe7' annum for the maintenance of one 
master and two ushers, for instructing the youth of the said 
province in Arithmetic, Navigation,^ and all useful learning, 

* Was this a foreshadowing of the establishment of the " Naval 
Academy" at Annapolis? 



KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL. U 

but chiefly for the fitting such as are disposed to study- 
divinity to be further educated at his Majesty's College Royal 
in Virginia, in order upon their return to be ordained by the 
Bishop of London's Suffragan, residing in this Province, 
both for that purpose and to supervise the lives of the clergy 
thereof, for whose support also, at the request of the Assem- 
bly, His Excellency hath settled a fair and competent main- 
tenance." 

Thus broad and far-reaching were the plans of the Mary- 
land Churchmen at the close of the seventeenth century for 
Church and churchly Christian education. The "building 
a free church and school at Annapolis," agreeably to the act 
of the Assembly, went on at the same time with the erection 
of the State House, each provided " out of the revenue raised 
for the charge of the province,"' on the staple product of the 
county, tobacco. 

But few and scanty notices of the early days of the King 
William's School exist. It is evident, however, that in the 
first decade of its chartered life it took shape and being and 
entered vigorously upon its beneficent career. Incidental 
allusions to its work are found in the records of the parish 
church. 

The Rev. Edward Butler, who, in October, 1710, became 
the fourth incumbent of St Ann's, appears to have been the 
master of the King William School early in the eighteenth 
century, and the record of his death proves that he continued 
in his charge of the school even after his induction to the 
rectorship of the parish.'' 

In 1 71 7 it was proposed in the Assembly to lay a tax of 
twenty shillings current money " for every negro imported 
into this province, either by land or by water." This tax was 
to "be applied towards the encouragement of one public 
school in every county." It was provided that the clergy and 

^"Hist. Notices of St. Ann's Parisli, 1649-1857," by the Rev. 
Ethan Allen, pp. 28, 29. 

* Died Nov. 9, 1713, the Rev. Edward Butler, rector of St. Ann's, 
and INlaster of the Free Schools, Annapolis. "Allen's Hist. Notices," 
p. 42. 



12 KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL. 

principal men in each county should be the visitors of these 
schools. 

These visitors, twelve in number for each school, were to 
secure "good school masters." These masters were to be 
" members of the Church of England, and of pure and exem- 
plary lives and conversations, and capable of teaching well 
the grammar, good writing and the mathematics." 

The records of St. Ann's, tmder date of Dec. 6, 1721, make 
mention of Mr. Piper as the register and school-master, 
while reference is found to the " charity boys," which proves 
that the King William's School was at length fully accom- 
plishing the object of its foundation. 

In 1722 the act of the Assembly in establishing the public 
free school at Annapolis received the royal assent.^ The 
" Queries to be Answered by every Minister," sent out by the 
Commissary of the Bishop of London in 1724, elicited replies 
which give in full the state of education in the Province at 
this time. It will be borne in mind that the schools reported 
as existing were in every case under the control of the 
Church. 

The Rev. Samuel Skippon, the sixth incumbent of St. 
Ann's, Annapolis, who died Dec. 8, 1724, reported to the 
Commissary as follows : " There is a public free school here 
maintained by a fund raised by the county. The master's 
name is Mr. Michael."'' There were no public schools in 
St. Paul's parish, Baltimore county, in King and Queen and 
All Faith parishes, St. Mary and Charles counties, in Christ 
Church and All Saints', Calvert county, in St. Paul's, Prince 
George's county, in St. James's, Anne Arundel county, in 
Coventry parish, Somerset county, in St. Paul's, Queen Anne 
county, in Dorchester parish, Dorchester county, and in Wil- 
liam and Mary parish. 

There were private schools in King and Queen parish, St. 
Mary and Charles counties ; in King George's parish, in Prince 
George's county; in Stepney parish, Somerset county; in 

* " Hist. Coll. Am. Col. Ch., IV., Md.," 148. 
^ " Hist. Coll. Am. Col. Ch., IV., Md.," 195. 



KING WILLLAJVI'S SCHOOL. 13 

Christ Church parish, Kent Island. In Port Tobacco and 
Durham parishes there were seven or eight private schools. 
In Shrewsbury parish, Kent county, there were four or five 
small private schools just opened, with about sixty scholars. 
In St. Michael's parish, Talbot county, the incumbent, the 
Rev. Henry Nicols, writes as follows: 

" There is no public school in my parish, but our governor 
has established a certain sum for erecting one in every 
county. There is about £250 in cash toward buying lands and 
building, and there will be about i20 per annum for a master, 
and we are in hopes [this] will improve into a greater sum 
every year; but things are in their infancy as yet." 

The Rev. Thomas Howell, incumbent of Great Choptank 
parish, Dorchester county, writes as follows: 

"There is in my parish one public school endowed with 
£20 current money, which is about £15 sterling, yearly, for 
which the master is obliged to teach ten charity scholars. 
The master is Philip Gilbeek."^ 

In several of the parishes where no schools either public 
or private were reported, the incumbent wrote that the people 
were " taking measures to have one," or were " going about 
it." Throughout the province the interest was general. 
Only one clergyman reported that tliere was no prospect of 
the establishment of a school within the limits of his charge. 

It is probable that the Rev. Samuel Edgar, the tenth in- 
cumbent of St. Ann's, was in charge of the King William's 
School from 1730 until 1744, the date of his induction into 
his cure. He died after less than a year's service at St. 
Ann's. 

In January, 1750, the General Assembly passed an act 
enabling the rector and visitors of King William's School to 
sell 650 acres of land in Dorchester county, devised to them 
by the last will of Thomas Smithson, late of Talbot county, 
and to invest the proceeds of the sale for the use of the 
school. 

In 1755 the records of St. Ann's refer to Mr. Isaac Daken 

^ " Hist. CoU. Am. Col. Oh., IV., Md.," 220. 



14 KING WILLIAI^I'S SCHOOL. 

as the master of King William^s School, and nine years later 
he is mentioned as still filling this place. 

In 1766 the Rev. Henry Addison, A. M. Oxon.., the rector 
of St. John's Parish, Potomac river, writes to the Bishop of 
London deprecating the recent ordination of James Colgrave 
or Colgreve, formerly known as Congreve, who was appointed 
master of the Free School of the County of Prince George 
some years before, but who " ran away in five or six months."^ 
This allusion to an unworthy priest throws light on the con- 
tinued existence of at least one of the county public free 
schools besides that firmly established at Annapolis. 

It is unfortunate that the records of the King William's 
School have not been preserved. The scattered notices we 
have gathered from the correspondence of the provincial 
clergy with their ecclesiastical superiors at home, together 
with scanty allusions to the school found in the files of the 
early Maryland newspapers, afford us nearly all we may know 
of the early days, the development and progress, and the last 
years of the independent existence of the first public free 
school of the North American continent, which from its start 
was under the direct control of the Church. 

The breaking out of the war for independence was disas- 
trous in its effect on the community, the Church, and the 
public school at Annapolis. On Aug. 14, preceding the 
Declaration of Independence, a convention of the delegates 
of the counties and cities of Maryland met in the State 
House in Annapolis to frame a constitution for the free and 
independent State of Maryland. On the following day, the 
Rev. Thomas Lendrum, the twenty-first incumbent of St 
Ann's, was desired to read prayers before this august body, 
largely composed of Churchmen, each morning of the session 
at 9 o'clock. The Hon. William Paca, one of the Maryland 
^* signers," and a parishioner of St. Ann's, was appointed the 
committee to secure the rector's services. It was at this con- 
vention that the act of religion of 1692, as finally adopted in 
1702, was repealed, and the "establishment" of the Church 

* " Hist. Coll. Am. Col. Ch., IV., Md.," 333. 



KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL. 15 

of England in Maryland was destroyed by the votes of 
Churchmen who were opposed to the union of Church and 
State. From the following November (1776) the clergy of 
the Church ceased to receive any legal support. 

St. Ann's Church was now dismantled, and by the close of 
this eventful year was leveled to the ground. This had been 
done in anticipation of the erection of a new building, which 
the breaking out of hostilities delayed. The playhouse was 
now occupied for divine services, the organ having been 
removed to these somewhat incongruous quarters. The 
country was now in commotion. Agriculture and commerce 
were at a stand. Mutual confidence was destroyed. Appre- 
hensions of the bombardment of Annapolis had driven many 
families from their homes. The scarcity of money interfered 
with trade, and merchants and mechanics, as well as the men 
of means and position, sought safety beyond the reach of 
navigable waters. In 1779, on June 7, under the provisions 
of the act v)f the Assembly " for the establishment of select 
vestries," the parish of St. Ann was reorganized and a vestry" 
chosen, the members of which took the oath of fidelity to the 
government and set about making provision for a minister. 
Divine service was now held in the building occupied by the 
King William's School. The Rev. Ralph Higginbotham, a 
graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, was appointed master of 
the Public Free School, on Aug. 17, 1784. On June 20 of this 
year there had been a convention of the clergy and lay dele- 
gates of the Church in Maryland, at which meeting " funda- 
mental principles " were agreed upon and measures taken for 
the reorganization of the Church. This meeting of the 
Church clergy and laymen of Maryland was productive of 
important results, both in the case of St. Ann's and the King 
William's School. The church which had been left unbuilt 
for nine years was again talked of, and at the November 
session of the General Assembly (1784) a college was estab- 
lished on the Western Shore by the name of St. John's, " hav- 
ing no religious test," and ofificered by a principal, vice-prin- 
cipal, professors, masters, tutors, etc., all to be chosen irre- 



16 KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL. 

spective of their religious professions or beliefs. The cele- 
brated Rev. Dr. William Smith, late provost of the College 
and Academy of 'Philadelphia, and now Bishop-elect of 
Maryland; the Rev. John Carroll, subsequently the first 
Roman Catholic Bishop of Baltimore, and later Archbishop 
of the metropolitan see; the Rev. Dr. Patrick Allison, the 
leading Presbyterian divine of the State, with the Churchman 
Richard Sprigg, the Presbyterian John Sterret, and the 
Roman Catholic George Digges, were appointed by the As- 
sembly soliciting agents for subscriptions for St. John's at 
Annapolis, and also for Washington College, Chestertown, 
Kent county, a charter for which was granted in 1782. 
These two colleges, one on the Eastern and the other on the 
Western Shore, were intended to form " The University of 
Maryland." 

In this work of providing for the higher culture, the As- 
sembly were but carrying out plans and purposes dating back 
to 1671. In that year an act was passed by the Upper House 
of the General Assembly, convened at St. Mary's, for " found- 
ing and erecting a school or college for the education of 
youth in learning and virtue." This act, the first efifort to 
establish a college in Maryland, was returned by the Lower 
House with amendments providing for the differences in 
religious beliefs existing at that time among the people of the 
province. These amendments were not acceptable to the 
Upper House, and there the proposed bill rested. 

Meanwhile, as we have seen, and largely through the in- 
fluence of the Rev. Thomas Bray, D. D., the Bishop of Lon- 
don's Commissary in Maryland, the Act of Assembly of 1694 
resulted in the establishment of the public school at Annap- 
olis, and provided for the founding of others in the various 
counties of the province. But this public school was not the 
college. 

In 1732 "proposals for founding a college at Annapolis" 
were read in the Upper House and recommended for the 
consideration of the popular branch of the Assembly. No 
legislative action, however, resulted from these proposals. 




BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, ANNAPOLIS. 



KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL. 17 

In 1763 the project was revived. A committee of the Gen- 
eral Assembly recommended that "the house in the city of 
Annapolis, which was intended for the governor of the prov- 
ince, be completely finished, and used for the college proposed 
to be established. This " proposed " college was to be pro- 
vided with seven masters and five servants, to be supported 
from the public funds. This measure failed to pass the Upper 
House. 

Ten years later the project was revived. In a letter to a 
friend in England, under date of Oct. 4, 1773, William Eddis, 
surveyor of customs at Annapolis, states that " the Legisla- 
ture has determined to found a college for the education of 
youth in every liberal and useful branch of science, which 
will preclude the necessity of crossing the Atlantic for the 
completion of a classical and polite education." The Gov- 
ernor's mansion, a " melancholy and mouldering monument," 
then styled " Bladen's Palace " or " Folly," was again thought 
of for the use of this institution. It is now, with a few 
changes in its interior, McDowell Hall of St. John's. It is 
certainly an interesting circumstance that the Churchmen of 
Maryland in the old province days should have conceived 
this plan of supplementing the King William's School by an 
institution for the higher culture which was finally realized 
by Churchmen's votes, directly on the establishment of inde- 
pendence, through the creation at Annapolis and at Chester- 
town of the " University of Maryland." The influence of the 
celebrated Rev. Dr. William Smith, who is recognized as the 
father of the American College system, which has obtained 
in all of our leading institutions of learning for the first cen- 
tury of our national existence, is clearly seen in the pro- 
visions of this legislative act for the creation of the University 
of Maryland. The measures contemplated by the Assembly 
were completed by the act of 1785, which conveyed the prop- 
erty, fun^s, masters and students of the King William's 
School to St. John's. 

The formal opening of the college thus developed out of, 
and in direct succession to, the first public free school in 



18 KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL. 

America took place on Nov. ii, 1789. A long procession, 
comprising the members of the General Assembly, the Chan- 
cellor, Judges of the General Court, the city officials, and 
the leading citizens of Annapolis, preceded by the students 
and faculty, with the governors and visitors of the old King 
William's School and the new St. John's College, formed at 
the State House and proceeded to the College Hall, where 
the dedication exercises were performed with great solemnity. 
The preacher and president of the day was the Rev. Dr. 
William Smith. An oration was delivered by the Rev. Ralph 
Higginbotham, on the advantages of a classical education. 

The leading spirits in furthering the interests of the new 
St. John's were the Bishop of Maryland, Dr. Claggett, the 
Roman Catholic Bishop of Baltimore, Dr. Carroll, and the 
prominent publicists of the time. Churchmen, Romanists, and 
Presbyterians. Among the early students of St. John's were 
George Washington Park Custis, step-grandson of our first 
president, and Fairfax and Lawrence Washington, his 
nephews. Francis Scott Key entered St. John's, Nov. 11, 
1789, and was graduated in 1796. 

On Friday morning, March 25, 1791, President Washing- 
ton, accompanied by the Governor of Maryland and a num- 
ber of the citizens of Annapolis, visited St. John's, and ex- 
pressed his satisfaction at the prospects of this promising 
institution. Shortly afterwards, in response to an address 
made by the authorities of the college, the President wrote as 
follows : 

" To the Faculty of St. John's College: 

" Gentlemen : — ^The satisfaction which I have derived from 
my visit to your infant seminary is expressed with much 
pleasure, and my wishes for its progress to perfection are 
proffered with sincere regard. 

" The very promising appearance of its infancy must flatter 
all its friends (with whom I entreat you to class me), with the 
hope of an early and at the same time a mature manhood. 

"You will do justice to the sentiments which your kind 



KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL. 19 

regard toward myself inspires, by believing that I recipro- 
cate the good wishes contained in your address, and I sin- 
cerely hope the excellence of your seminary will be mani- 
fested in the morals and science of the youths who are 
favored with your care. George Washington. 

''Annapolis, April 77, ijgi'' 

The connection of the Church with St. John's was still 
close and uninterrupted. Dr. J. McDowell was the first 
president, but the former master of the King William's School 
and rector of St. Ann's, the Rev. Ralph Higginbotham, was 
vice-principal of St. John's until his death in 181 3. His suc- 
cessor at St. Ann's, the Rev. William Duke, was, at the soli- 
citation of Bishop Claggett, as we are told by Dr. Ethan Allen, 
the Professor of Languages at the college for several years: 
until in January, 1806, the Legislature, by a majority of six 
votes, withdrew the annuity of £1750 ($8750) which had been 
voted at the outset with a view of providing a permanent 
fund and had been pledged " annually and forever hereafter " 
as a " donation by the public to the use of the college." 

In the thirteen years from 1793, when the first class was 
graduated, until in 1806, on the withdrawal of the legislative 
allowance, the visitors and governors were compelled to an- 
nounce the suspension of the institution, the list of students 
contain the names of four Governors of Maryland, one 
United States Senator, five members of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, four Judges of the courts, one Attorney-General, 
one United States District Attorney, six State Senators, 
fifteen Representatives, besides officers of the army and navy, 
leading lawyers, divines, and men of note in other walks of 
life. In 1807 the rector of St. Ann's, the Rev. Bethel Judd, 
D. D., originally of Connecticut, assumed the principalship 
of St. John's. The college, almost wholly without funds, and 
rich alone in its historic associations, was by the self-denying 
exertions of this excellent man maintained till 181 2, when the 
Legislature restored $1000 of its annuity. A lottery, granted 
by the Assembly in 1821, added $20,000 to the college fund. 



20 KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL. 

The Rev. Dr. Henry Lyon Davis, rector of St. Ann's, who at 
the age of nineteen had been appointed Professor of Latin 
and Greek at Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa., his ahna 
mater, accepted the position of vice-principal of the reviving 
institution in 1815, and was its honored head from 1820 to 
1824. The Rev. Dr. William Rafferty was principal from 
1824 to 1 83 1. In this latter year the Rev. Dr. Hector Hum- 
phreys was appointed to the headship of St. John's. By his 
persevering efforts, and especially through his personal influ- 
ence with the members of the Legislature, $2000 per annimi 
was added to the appropriation, conditioned by a provision 
that the Board of Visitors and Governors should agree to 
accept it "in full satisfaction of all legal or equitable claims 
they may have or be supposed to have against the State." 
The board consented to this proposition, and a deed of release 
was executed, and entered upon the records of the Court of 
Appeals. " By the terms of this act, the Governor, the pre- 
siding officers of the two Houses of the Assembly and the 
Judges of the Court of Appeals were made ex-officio mem- 
bers of the college board, thus indelibly giving to St. John's 
the character of a State institution." 

In 1835 the principal raised by subscription about $11,000, 
and in June of that year the comer-stone of Humphreys 
Hall was laid with imposing ceremonies. Pinkney Hall was 
built in 1855. Two years later Dr. Humphreys was suc- 
ceeded by the Rev. Dr. Cleland Kinloch Nelson, who pre- 
sided over the college with great acceptance and success 
until, in 1861, the college buildings were occupied by the 
United States authorities as a military hospital. This occu- 
pancy continued until the close of the war. 

The Board of Visitors, in 1859, deeming the Act of the 
Legislature of 1806 to be a violation of charter rights, and 
therefore void, obtained the consent of the Legislature to 
submit to the Court of Appeal in substance the following 
queries: 

(i) Whether the appropriation made in the original charter 
constitutes a contract on the part of the State which the act 
of 1806 could not make void. 



r 



1 




PINKNEY HALL AND PRESIDENT'S HOUSE- 



KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL. 21 

(2) Whether this repealing act of 1806 is not practically a 
violation of the Federal Constitution, since it impairs the 
binding obligation of a charter. 

(3) Whether the charter did not constitute such a contract 
as would be legally binding upon individual citizens if entered 
into between them. 

The decision on the queries submitted was unanimously in 
favor of the college. The board brought suit against the 
State for arrears of appropriations and interest amounting to 
$300,000, but the court held that the college could not re- 
cover in consequence of the release executed by the Board of 
Visitors and Governors in 1833. 

It was the opinion of leading jurists, among them the 
celebrated Reverdy Johnson, that under the terms of the 
charter the Board of Visitors and Governors had acted ultra 
vires in giving this release — a veritable giving up of a birth- 
right for a mess of pottage. In 1866, when measures were 
on foot to take the case to the Supreme Court of the United 
States, the Maryland Legislature restored the arrearages of 
the annuity of $3000 per annum, withheld from 1861 to 1866, 
and voted an additional sum of $12,000 per annum for five 
years from the beginning of the year 1868. The College 
Visitors, confident that this appropriation would be con- 
tinued, and regarding it as a recognition of the rights of the 
institution on the part of the Legislature, accepted the amount 
tendered and relinquished their suit. ^-^"^ 

The college buildings were put iji-^tfiorough repair, and 
choice was made of the celebrated Dr. Henry Barnard, of 
Connecticut, late Commissioner of Education, as the princi- 
pal of St. John's. The college was reopened in September, 
1866. On Dr. Barnard's resignation, the following summer, 
Dr. James C. Welling was chosen in his stead. Dr. Welling 
resigned at the close of the session of 1869-70, and Dr. 
James M. Gamett, now of the University of Virginia, was 
appointed principal. Under his presidency in 1871 the first 
class since i860 was graduated. The Board of Visitors es- 
tablished a large number of State scholarships, each entitling 



22 KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL. 

the holder to exemption from payment of room rent and 
tuition fees, and the number of students increased nearly one 
hundred per cent. In 1872 the Assembly renewed the ap- 
propriation for one year, and in 1878 for two years more. 
In 1880 the Legislature failed to make the usual appropria- 
tion, and Principal Gamett and the other members of the 
faculty resigned their chairs. In 1882 the Legislature voted 
a grant of $7500 annually for two years. In 1884 no appro- 
priation was made, but $4000 was given the following year. 
This uncertainty as to income could not fail to produce ill- 
effects. The officers appointed to the various positions of 
instruction and government felt the precarious nature of their 
support and were always ready for change. The number of 
students dwindled. The buildings deteriorated, and there 
was no appreciable progress toward the redemption of past 
hopes and the realization of early promise till the appoint- 
ment of Dr. Thomas Fell at the opening of the session of 
1886-87. 

At that time but sixty students were in attendance, but with 
the incoming of a new and accomplished principal, renewed 
life was at once manifest. The second year of Dr. Fell's 
incumbency witnessed the more than doubling of the number 
of students. The halls were renovated and equipped with 
every modern convenience. Steam heating was provided for 
Humphreys and Pinkney Halls, with hot and cold water in 
the rooms. Bath rooms were added, and every appliance 
for comfort and culture supplied. 

On June 26, 1889, St. John's College celebrated its cen- 
tennial of continuous college life. The ceremonies were 
closely modeled on those of 1789. The Board of Visitors 
and Governors, the faculty, headed by the principal, Dr. Fell, 
in academic gown and hood, together with the alumni, 
formed in procession at the State House. Escorted by a 
battalion of the college cadets in uniform, the procession, 
comprising the various civic and other organizations of the 
ancient city of Annapolis, marched to a tent on the college 
campus. On a platform raised under the historic poplar tree. 




TENNIS CLUB. 







^Pr^t^'i* 



D 



t 





GRADUATING CLASS, 1890. 




INTERIOR OF COLLEGE CHAPEL. 



KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL. 23 

which antedates college, King William's School, and the city 
itself, were the prominent civilians and clergy of the neigh- 
borhood. An historical sketch was read by Mr. Philip R. 
Voorhees, an alumnus of St. John's, whose) researches into the 
annals of the college have supplied not a few of the facts we 
have already recited. The address was delivered by the Rev. 
Leighton Parks, D. D., rector of Emmanuel Church, Boston, 
and the occasion was one of both interest and promise. In 
1894 the 200th anniversary of the founding of King Wil- 
liam's School occurs. In 1896 — so fast come round these 
memorable days — will occur the 225th anniversary of the first 
attempt to found a college in Maryland, which, if success had 
attended the effort, would have antedated every American 
college or university save " the College at Cambridge, Mass.," 
— Harvard. 

St. John's is the alma mater of many of Maryland's most 
noted and honored sons. It has given to the American 
Church the Bishop of Georgia — the nephew, and bearing the 
name, of one of St. John's most faithful and successful prin- 
cipals. The college domain is situated on the Severn river, a 
few miles from Chesapeake bay. Its ancient halls covered 
with ivy; its venerable trees — maples, lindens, poplars — shad- 
ing the broad acres of the campus ; the historic " Bladen's 
Folly," now McDowell Hall, with its curious old belfry and 
its traces of its old glory, when Annapolis, with its royal 
charter and its royal governor, was a mimic court of St. 
James — all make up a scene of picturesque beauty. In the 
library are the many " quaint and curious volumes " brought 
over by Commissary Bray and given to the library of St. 
Ann's Parish. In the graduation hall are the memorials of 
the successive classes, and here the college prayers are said 
and the college exercises performed. There are nearly or 
quite 200 students and instructors now at St. John's, and the 
greensward is alive with the scholars in cap and gown, or else 
in " outing costumes," for athletics are not neglected at St. 
John's, and with the study of the classics and the sciences the 
Johnian combines the eflort to secure the mens sana in cor- 



24 KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL. 

pore sano. Historic associations meet one on every side. 
The " finished city," as AnnapoHs has been happily styled, is 
"a thing of beauty and a joy forever." The first public 
school in America — the Colonial Church's first gift for the 
work of Christian education on our country's soil — ^has not 
perished. Under another name it lives and flourishes. May 
it live forever! 



REMINISCENCES 

OF 

OLD ST. JOHN'S 

Annapolis, Md. 



REMINISCENCES OF OLD ST. JOHN^S, 
ANNAPOLIS, MD. 

BY WILLIAM HARWOOD, B. A., M. A. 

St. John's College was chartered in seventeen hundred and 
eighty-four, by the men who had gone through the awful 
struggle of the Revolution, and who for some time after- 
wards continued to be influential in the public councils of the 
State. Those men knew well the necessity of an educated 
and intelligent population, for sustaining the institutions they 
had framed, and promoting the general welfare. While they 
declared it to be their object " to train up and perpetuate a 
succession of able and honest men, for discharging the va- 
rious offices and duties of life," they laid the foundations of 
an institution which might be the beginning and head of a 
system of public schools, to diffuse its benefits to all the 
people of the State. Its beginning was small, as limited by 
the circumstances of the time. 

A hundred years ago McDowell Hall was the only build- 
ing erected on the college ground. In the rear of McDowell 
Hall a large garden was enclosed. Below this towards Col- 
lege Creek the ground was dotted over with graves of French 
soldiers, our allies in the war. McDowell Hall stands on a 
moderate eminence some distance back from a principal 
street. College Avenue, leading to the Naval School. On the 
south side of it, a hundred years ago, was a wide expanse 
of open ground, extending as far as where the Short Line 
Depot now stands. On the north side the open ground 
extended to the Severn river, all along which a range of lofty 
hills gave prospect wide over the city, the river and the bay, 
and beyond the broad water of the river towered up before the 
view the majestic forest known as " Brice's Woods." 



28 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

The gigantic tulip-poplar, sometimes called " Liberty 
Tree/' under which the students lolled in the shade on the 
green, in the hot summer days (where tradition says that the 
people of Ann Arundel at times met in the troublous days 
before the Revolution, to consult together and to listen to 
Samuel Chase in his arraignment of King George), then 
spread out its waving boughs away far beyond anything 
known of it by this generation. 

The college, begun in this modest way, and with these 
surroundings, seems from the talk of the old men who had 
been students, or were otherwise interested, to have been a 
continual delight to those connected with it. 

In an evil hour it incurred the enmity of men in the party 
then dominant in the State. They smote the college with a 
relentless hand and it fell. Peace to their ashes ! They knew 
not what they did. In after years, in his appeal to the 
Legislature, Mr. Key said: "Thirty years ago I stood 
within that Hall, with the companions and the guides of my 
youth, and bade farewell to them, to our revered instruc- 
tors, and received the parting benediction of that beloved and 
venerated man, who ruled the institution he had reared and 
adorned, not more by the force of authority than of affection. 
In a few short years I returned, and the companions and 
guides of my youth were gone. The glory of the Temple 
of Science, which the wisdom and the piety of our fathers had 
founded, was departed. I beheld in its place a dreary ruin. 
I wandered over that beautiful and silent green, no longer 
sacred to the meditations of the enraptured student, or vocal 
with the joyous shouts of youthful merriment. I sat down 
on those mouldering steps and beneath the shadow of that 
aged tree that like me seemed to lament its lost companions, 
and I mourned over the madness that had wrought this deso- 
lation." 

While the college flourished, the men who went forth from 
its halls into the world gained honor for themselves and did 
noble service for the State and the country. There were 
three graduates of the class of 1793, the first class thatgradu- 




THE OLD POPLAR TREE. 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 29 

ated. Of the class of 1794 there were six members, but of 
these, Alexander Contee Magruder, a distinguished lawyer 
and a judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals, did not 
graduate, by reason of his sickness at the time of the Com- 
mencement. Thomas Chase, one of the most accomplished 
scholars from the college, led a life of retirement on his farm 
or in other private pursuits. John Carlisle Herbert repre- 
sented Maryland in Congress. There were six graduates in 
the class of 1796, four in that of 1797, and six in that of 1798. 
Of these, Robert H. Goldsborough and John Leeds Kerr 
represented Maryland in the Congress of the United States. 
John Taylor Lomax was a Judge of the General Court of 
Virginia. John Hanson Thomas, the famous orator, was a 
member of the class of 1798, and did battle for his party in 
the field of debate against William Pinkney, and with his 
eloquence often thrilled the Maryland Legislature. The 
Classical Professor of St. John's dubbed the class of 1796 his 
'^ Tenth Legion," after the famous legion of Julius Caesar. 
The acknowledged leader of this class, John Shaw, a surgeon 
in the navy, died in early life while at sea. Another member 
of this class was Francis Scott Key, who, amid the bombard- 
ment of Fort McHenry, stood on the deck of the British ship 
and poured out the enthusiasm of his soul in the " Star- 
Spangled Banner." 

In the year eighteen hundred and twenty-four the college 
was the scene of extraordinary festivities. Our government 
had sent a national ship to bring over General Lafayette to 
our country as the guest of the nation. Lafayette, escorted 
by two companies of cavalry, as he approached Annapolis 
was met by a deputation from the city, — ^Judge J. Townley 
Chase, Chancellor Bland, and other gentlemen. Judge 
Chase greeted him with welcome — the friend of our country, 
the friend of Washington, the defender of the rights of man 
— and invoked for him the choicest blessings of Heaven, here 
and hereafter. 

Lafayette said : " The welcome I receive from you, gen- 
tlemen, in the name of the citizens of Annapolis ; the pleasure 



30 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

to meet you again, my dear and venerated sir; and the re- 
membrance of one of my earliest friends and co-patriots in 
the cause of America, your excellent brother, are sentiments 
which I am happy to express. I thank you for the testi- 
monies of your esteem and friendship. I rejoice with you in 
the admirable results of our glorious revolution, and feel an 
affectionate eagerness to re-enter the metropolis where I am 
so kindly invited, and where so many old obligations have 
been conferred upon me." 

At his entrance into the city, Lafayette was received by a 
large array of military and citizens, and by them was escorted 
to the State House. Little maidens, with banners waving, 
bearing the inscription, " Lafayette, the friend of our fathers, 
will always be dear to the hearts of their children," — and the 
little maidens strewed flowers in his path. 

As he entered the Senate Chamber, Mayor Boyle made 
him an address of welcome, referring in tones of deep feeling 
to his service to our country in the revolutionary struggle, 
and expressive of the admiration and sympathy of our coun- 
trymen for him in the events of his glorious career. 

Lafayette responded with an expression of his joy in the 
blessed results of our great struggle, and his gratification in 
the manifestations of respect and kindness of our people for 
him. 

While here he was entertained by our citizens and public 
officers, among them Governor Stevens and Judge Jeremiah 
Townley Chase. By invitation of Governor Stevens, he 
made the Governor's mansion his home during his stay 
among us. 

At night the city was illuminated, and General Lafayette 
was escorted to the ball-room, the Hall of St. John's College, 
where the grace and beauty and sterling manhood of the 
region around were assembled, all eager to show their respect 
for our illustrious guest. A gay company, dazzling lights, 
brilliant flowers, music and song and rejoicing hearts made it 
" lively times " in old St. John's. 

Next day on the college green there was a review of the 
military of the United States and the Maryland Volunteers, 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 31 

and a contest in rifle-shooting. The prize won was presented 
by General Lafayette to a member of the company of Cap- 
tain Lewis Neth. General Lafayette was then conducted to 
the Citizens' Banquet in the Hall of St. John's College. 

On Sunday General Lafayette attended divine service in 
the Methodist Church. On Monday he was entertained with 
a banquet in the Hall of St. John's College by the Maryland 
Legislature, after which he left for the City of Washington, 
escorted by a company of cavalry. 

On the 22d of February, 1827, a Commencement was held 
in old St. Anne's Church, as was usual at that time. At this 
Commencement there were six graduates, — John Henry 
Alexander, William Hallam Tuck, afterwards one of the 
Judges of the Maryland Court of Appeals, William Pinkney, 
afterwards Bishop of Maryland, Ezekiel Hughes, Thomas 
Archer, and William Harwood. 

In a most eloquent address, Mr. Key (Francis Scott Key) 
made an appeal to the Maryland Legislature in behalf of the 
college. The efforts of Mr. Key and of others subsequently 
have placed the college on some vantage-ground, but it needs 
a friendly hand of more potence than has yet been extended 
to it to enable it to execute the design of its founders. The 
act which established the college declares that it was founded 
to " train up and perpetuate a succession of able and honest 
men, for discharging with usefulness the various offices and 
duties of life." 

Fabius and Scipio said, when they looked on the images 
of their ancestors, they were incited to the emulation of their 
virtues. Liberally, amply endowed, our college might train 
up and perpetuate a wide succession of able and useful men, 
minds enriched with the stores of literature and science, men 
who could take the place that was filled by the Chases and 
the Carrolls in the " days that tried men's souls," or if our 
soil should ever be polluted by foreign invasion, men who 
would prove themselves worthy descendants of the Maryland 
men of Long Island and Camden and Guilford and the 
Eutaws, and stand — "a wall of fire around our own, our 
native land." 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 

Annapolis, Md. 



■~'»'J ■riA. 




ST. JOHN^S COLLEGE, ANNAPOLIS, MD. 

BY PHILIP R. VOORHEES, '55. 

St. John's College, at Annapolis, the alma mater of so 
many of Maryland's most noted and honored sons, is charm- 
ingly situated on the banks of the Severn river, a few miles 
from the Chesapeake bay. Nothing in the country surpasses 
the picturesque beauty of its situation. 

Facing College avenue are McDowell Hall, the central 
building, with Pinkney Hall, named after William Pinkney, 
a distinguished alumnus, and the residence of the president 
and vice-president on the left, and Humphreys Hall and two 
buildings which professors occupy on the right. The cam- 
pus, which slopes toward the avenue, embraces about twenty 
acres. The front lawn is shaded by large, handsome maples, 
lindens, poplars, and other trees. Nearly in front of Pinkney 
Hall is a gigantic poplar tree, fresh-looking and green, with 
ivy climbing up around its old boughs, which is supposed to 
be older than even the ancient city of Annapolis. The first 
treaty with the Indians is said to have been signed under its- 
shade. Nearly every side of Pinkney Hall is covered with 
ivy, and the same vine is making its way over the other 
buildings, which gives them a venerable and dignified appear- 
ance. McDowell Hall, the central building, is four stories 
high, and in it are recitation rooms and offices. On the first 
floor is a large graduation hall, with a gallery above, upon 
which are hung shields with Latin and other inscriptions 
giving the names of the members of each graduating class. 
A curious old belfry surmounts the structure, and a common 
cord, by which the bell is rung, passes through the various 
floors. Everything about the old house carries one back to 
days long past. Even after this lapse of time can be seen 
places in the old hall filled in with bricks where pillars were 



36 ' ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

to be put out and from which porches were to project. On 
the south side the places left for the pillars were never filled 
in. Near the eaves are blocks of wood inserted in the bricks, 
where cornices were to be placed, and in the library is a 
curious collection of rare old theological books from the old 
King WilHam's School. 

Humphreys Hall is used for the accommodation of the 
younger boys, and Pinkney Hall is occupied by the more 
mature college students. The view from the halls is attrac- 
tive. The Severn river is on the left and in the rear of the 
ground, the Naval Academy further along on the left, and 
the town, with the old State House and Governor's mansion, 
in front and on the right. Such is St. John's College, whose 
history forms one of the most interesting chapters in the 
annals of Maryland. 

It reaches back in the continuity of its records to the 
earliest colonial times. The first effort to establish a college 
in Maryland was made by the General Assembly convened 
in the city of St. Mary's in the year 1671. An act was then 
passed by the Upper House of Assembly, for " founding and 
erecting a school or college for the education of youth in 
learning and virtue." 

This act was returned by the Lower House with certain 
amendments providing for the diflferences in religious views 
existing at that time among the people, which amendments 
were not acceptable to the Upper House, and there the bill 
rested. 

In 1694, the then Governor, Sir Francis Nicholson, sent a 
message to the Legislature proposing " that a way may be 
found for the building of a free school for the province," and 
offering to give money for its maintenance. The plan was 
approved, and the General Assembly offered subscriptions of 
tobacco. No further action was taken at this time, but in 
1696 an act was passed which resulted in the establishment 
of King William's School. This act recites that the school 
was established for " the propagation of the Gospel and edu- 
cation of youth in good letters and manners." It was ad- 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 37 

dressed to " His Most Excellent Majesty, etc., ' Dread Sov- 
ereign ' William III. of England." This law further enacted 
that " the Most Reverend Father in God, Thomas, by Divine 
Providence, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate and 
Metropolitan of all England, may be Chancellor of said 
school, and that to perpetuate the memory of your Majesty, 
it may be called King William's School." 

The Reverend Dr. Bray, who had been appointed Commis- 
sary of Maryland by the Bishop of London, and who is said 
to have been the originator of the Society for the Propagation 
of the Gospel, was mainly instrumental in obtaining this said 
act. 

King William's School was thus established. Governor 
Nicholson gave to the school a lot in the town of Annapolis, 
with the house thereon, and the Legislature appropriated 
money to it, but the school-house was not finished until 1701. 
It was of brick, and stood on the south side of the State 
House. 

The Bishop of London had sent over the Rev. Andrew 
Gaddes to take charge of the school, but he not finding it 
finished, was sent to All Saints', Calvert county, Md. 

The earliest mention of an officiating master of the school 
is found in the records of St. Anne's Parish Church. They 
record, "Died, November 9th, 171 3, Rev. Edward Butler, 
rector of St. Anne's, and master of the free school, Annap- 
olis." 

Few of the names of the rectors of the school have come 
down to us, but about 1756, and for nine years after that 
date, Mr. Isaac Daken is mentioned as master of the school. 
On the 17th of August, 1784, the Rev. Ralph Higginbotham 
was appointed master of King William's School, and when at 
a later date the school became incorporated with the college, 
we find him occupying the position of Professor of Lan- 
guages in the newly-organized institution. This school is 
noted in the annals of the State as the nursery of some of her 
greatest men, amongst others the distinguished lawyer and 
statesman, William Pinkney. 



38 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

Information, however, regarding this seminary is but 
meager, although the act of 1750 indicates that the school 
was not without influential friends and supporters. In the 
meantime, in 1732, as appears by a paper now lying in the 
executive department at Annapolis, " proposals for founding 
a college at Annapolis" were read in the Upper House of 
Assembly and recommended to the consideration of the 
Lower House, but no legislative effect was given to these 
proposals. 

This project was again revived in 1763. A committee of 
the General Assembly recommended that " the house in the 
city of Annapolis which was intended for the Governor of 
the province, be completely finished and used for the college 
proposed to be established," the money for the work to come 
out of the public treasury. The annual cost of the faculty, 
consisting of seven masters, with the five servants, was pro- 
vided for. The measure, however, failed to pass the Upper 
House. Ten years later the intention of establishing a college 
in Annapolis was again manifested, as we learn from a letter 
written October 4th, 1773, by William Eddis, surveyor of 
customs, at Annapolis, to a friend in England. 

In this letter he states that " the Legislature has determined 
to found a college for the education of youth in every liberal 
and useful branch of science, which will preclude the neces- 
sity of crossing the Atlantic for the completion of a classical 
and polite education." A building on the banks of the Sev- 
ern, originally intended for the Governor's mansion, but de- 
scribed in the letter as a " melancholy and mouldering monu- 
ment," was designated as the proposed collegiate edifice. 
This building is now McDowell Hall, the central one of five 
constituting St. John's College. 

The Revolution interfered with the carrying out of the 
plan, but in 1784 the charter of St. John's College was 
granted, two years after a like charter had been given for the 
establishment of Washington College at Chestertown, on the 
Eastern Shore. 

It was intended by the terms of the charter that the two 




Mcdowell hall, 

St. John's College, Annapolis, Md. 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 39 

colleges thus founded should constitute one university under 
the name of the University of Maryland. 

By act, 1785, the property and funds and students of King 
William's School were conveyed to St. John's College. 

Among the chattels passed to the college were a number 
of " quaint and curious volumes " brought over by the Rev. 
Dr. Bray from England, and which still remain in the library 
of St. John's. 

On November ii, 1789, the college was formally opened, 
and the dedication was performed with much solemnity, all 
the public bodies being in attendance, and forming a long 
procession from State House to the college hall. 

Among those who were active in promoting the welfare of 
the college in its infancy are to be found John Carroll, the 
first Roman Catholic Archbishop of America; the Right 
Rev. Thomas John Claggett, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of 
Maryland, and other eminent divines of the Roman Catholic, 
Episcopal, and Presbyterian churches. 

Tradition says that the name King William's School was 
changed to St. John's College to suit the ideas of the patrons 
of that period. 

Among the students of that early period are to be found the 
names of George Washington Park Custis, a stepgrandson, 
and Fairfax and Lawrence Washington, nephews of George 
Washington; also, of Francis Scott Key, who entered St. 
John's, November nth, 1789, and graduated in 1796. 

On Friday morning, March 25th, 1791, President Wash- 
ington, attended by the Governor of Maryland and a number 
of citizens, visited St. John's College, and expressed much 
satisfaction at the appearance of this rising institution. 

The following letter was written a little later as a proof of 
his friendly sentiments toward St. John's : 

Annapolis, April Tth, 1791. 
To THE Faculty op St. John's College. 

Gentlemen :— The satisfaction which I have derived from my 
visit to your infant seminary is expressed with real pleasure, and 
my wishes for its progress to perfection are proffered with sincere 
regard. 



40 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

The very promising appearance of its infancy must flatter all its 
friends (with whom I entreat you to class me), with the hope of an 
early, and at the same time, a mature manhood. 

You will do justice to the sentiments which your kind regard 
towards myself inspires, by believing that I reciprocate the good 
wishes contained in your address, and I sincerely hope the excel- 
lence of your seminary will be manifested in the morals and science 
of the youths who are favored with your care. 

George Washington. 

Almost all the noted families of Maryland, and of other 
States, have in some way, and at some time, JDeen connected 
with the college. In order to establish the college under the 
terms provided for in the charter, private subscriptions, 
amounting to $10,000, were collected, and to provide a per- 
manent fund for the further encouragement and establish- 
ment of the college, the Legislature enacted that the sum of 
£1750 ($8750) current money be annually and forever here- 
after given and granted as a donation by the public to the 
use of the college. 

With this aid the college went forward under Dr. John 
McDowell, the first president, in its work of educating men, 
till January, 1806, when the Legislature, by majority of only 
six, withdrew the annuity, and the visitors and governors of 
the college were compelled to announce that the college 
must close. 

Within the brief period of thirteen years, from 1793, when 
the first class was graduated, until 1806, the names of four 
Governors of Maryland, six United States Senators, five 
members of the House of Representatives, four Judges of the 
courts, one Attorney-General, one United States District 
Attorney, one Auditor of the United States Treasury, six 
State Senators, fifteen members of the House of Delegates, 
besides foreign consuls, officers of the army and navy, phy- 
sicians and surgeons, distinguished lawyers (including one 
Chancellor of South Carolina), college professors, etc., are to 
be found among the names in the register of the alumni. In 
1807 Rev. Dr. Bethel Judd was chosen principal, and the 
work, though grievously hampered by the action of the Leg- 
islature, was partially continued, and in January, 181 2, $1000 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 41 

of the annuity was restored. A lottery granted in 1821 added 
$20,000 to the funds, and enabled the college to extend its 
work. Rev. Dr. Henry Lyon Davis served as principal from 
1820 to 1824, and the Rev. Dr. William Rafiferty from 1824 
to 1 83 1. In 1 83 1 Rev. Dr. Hector Humphreys was .ap- 
pointed principal, and by his persevering efforts and personal 
influence with the members of the Legislature a sum of $2000 
was added to the annuity, provided the Board of Visitors and 
Governors should agree to accept it "in full satisfaction of 
all legal or equitable claims they might have or be supposed 
to have against the State." 

The Board consented, and the deed of release was executed 
and entered upon the records of the Court of Appeals. At 
the same time the Governor of the State, President of the 
Senate, Speaker of the House of Delegates, and the Judges 
of the Court of Appeals were made ex-o-fficio members of the 
Board, indelibly affixing to the college the character of a 
State institution. In 1833 the principal was authorized by 
the Visitors and Governors to collect a fund of $30,000. 

About $11,000 was raised, and in June, 1835, the comer- 
stone of Humphreys Hall was laid with impressive cere- 
monies. Chancellor John Johnson, a distinguished alumnus, 
was the orator. From this time on there are lists of grad- 
uates for each year except 1843, '45» '4^, '51 and '54, until 
1855, when the college was reorganized, and in the same year 
Pinkney Hall was built. Two years afterward Dr. Hum- 
phreys was succeeded by Rev. Dr. C. K. Nelson. He guided 
the college successfully till 1861, when the college buildings 
were utilized as a military hospital by the United States Army 
until the close of the war. 

The Board of Visitors in 1859, believing the Act of 1806 a 
violation of charter rights, and therefore void, with the con- 
sent of the Legislature had submitted these points to the 
Court of Appeals for decision: 

I. Whether the appropriation made in the charter consti- 
tutes a contract on the part of the State, which would not be 
legally repealed by the Act of 1805. 



42 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

2. Whether this latter act is not a violation of the Consti- 
tution of the United States by impairing the obligation of 
charter. 

3. Whether the charter constituted such a contract as if 
entered into between individual citizens would be legally 
binding upon them. 

All these were unanimously decided in favor of the col- 
lege. The Visitors and Governors then brought suit to re- 
cover the amount of their claim — over $300,000, including 
interest — but the court held that the Board of Visitors could 
not avoid the release given in 1833, and the suit went against 
them. Reverdy Johnson and other eminent lawyers held that 
under the terms of the charter the board had gone beyond 
its powers in granting the release, and advised that the case 
be taken to the Supreme Court of the United States. In 
1866, after the close of the Civil War, and while measures 
were in progress for obtaining a decree in favor of the col- 
lege, the Legislature restored the arrearages of the annuity of 
$3000, suspended from 1861 to 1866, and appropriated an 
additional sum of $12,000 per annum for five years from the 
first of 1868. The Board of Visitors, believing that this 
appropriation would be a permanent one, and that it was 
given in due recognition of the claims of the college, accepted 
it in good faith, and relinquished the suit which they had 
been prepared to make. 

The college buildings were put in thorough repair, and Dr. 
Henry Barnard, of Connecticut, late Commissioner of Edu- 
cation, was elected principal, and the college was reopened 
in September, 1866. On his resignation the following sum- 
mer, Dr. James C. Welling, afterwards and now president of 
Columbian University, Washington, D. C, was chosen prin- 
cipal, and the college opened in the autumn with 115 students. 
Before the close of the next session the Board of Visitors and 
Governors, in recognition of the increased annuity, passed an 
ordinance establishing 150 State scholarships, each scholar- 
ship entitling the holder to exemption from the payment of 
room rent and tuition fees in any department of the college, 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 43 

and the number of students in attendance increased to 225. 
Dr. Welling resigned at the close of the session 1869-70, and 
Dr. James M. Gamett, now professor at the University of 
Virginia, was appointed in his stead. Under his adminis- 
tration, in 1 87 1, the first class since i860 was graduated, and 
continuously thereafter classes have been duly graduated 
each year. The General Assembly of 1872 renewed the ap- 
propriations for six years, and that of 1878 for two years. 
The Legislature of 1880 having failed to make an appropria- 
tion, Dr. James M. Gamett, with other members of the fac- 
ulty, tendered their resignations, which were accepted by the 
Board of Visitors. 

Rev. Dr. J. M. Leavitt was invited to undertake the admin- 
istrative duties of the college, and though, in 1882, the Leg- 
islature appropriated $7500 for two years, the number of 
students in attendance continued steadily to dwindle. The 
Legislature of 1884 made no appropriation, but $4000 was 
appropriated in 1886, and the interest on the college debt 
provided for in 1888. In the summer of 1884 Dr. Leavitt 
resigned, and went abroad for his health, and Prof. William 
H. Hopkins, subsequently appointed President of the 
Woman's College, Baltimore, Md., was installed as acting 
principal. He maintained control during the sessions of 
1884-85 and 1885-86, but in spite of strenuous efforts on his 
part to ameliorate the condition of things, no appreciable 
progress was made. Under his direction and personal efforts 
the detail of an officer from the United States Army, and also 
of an engineer from the United States Navy, were obtained, 
in accordance with the provisions of certain acts of Congress, 
with the conditions of which St. John's was able to comply. 

He resigned in the summer of 1886, to accept the position 
offered to him by the trustees of the Woman's College, Bal- 
timore, Md., and Dr. Thomas Fell was called to occupy the 
presidential chair. At the opening of the session, 1886-87, 
when he entered upon his duties, there were but sixty stu- 
dents in attendance, and the general condition of the grounds 
and buildings had become greatly deteriorated. He at once 



44 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 



set to work to renovate the study rooms and to promote the 
comfort of the students during their residence at college. 
The old wood stoves were removed, and in their place steam- 
heating apparatus was introduced. Bath-rooms, with hot and 
cold water, and other conveniences, were placed in both 
Humphreys and Pinkney Halls. New life and vigor were 
also infused into the whole course of instruction, and, as a 
consequence, the number of students during next year 
amounted to 138, or more than double the number in attend- 
ance at the time of his appointment. 

On the 26th of June, 1889, the college celebrated the looth 
anniversary of its existence under the title of St. John^s Col- 
lege. Many of the old students returned for the occasion, 
and friends who had not met for years exchanged the heart- 
iest greeting. Owing to the large assemblage of visitors a 
tent was erected on the campus, in the shade of the famous 
old poplar tree, where the literary features of the programme 
were carried out. 

At 10 o'clock, in imitation of the ceremony observed at the 
founding of the college in 1789, the Board of Visitors and 
Governors, the faculty, headed by Dr. Fell, wearing his aca- 
demic gown and hood, and alumni, formed in procession at 
the State House, and, escorted by the battalion of college 
cadets in uniform, under command of Lieutenant Jamar, 
U. S. A., marched to the tent on the campus. On the plat- 
form, erected under the ancient poplar tree, among many 
others, were seated Governor Jackson, who was ex-officio 
president of the Board of Visitors, Rev. Drs. C. K. Nelson, 
John M. Leavitt and William H. Hopkins, former principals 
of the college; President Fell, Dr. Abram Claude, Maj. 
Sprigg Harwood, Capt. John Mullan, Messrs. Frank H. 
Stockett, Nicholas Brewer, J. Schaaff Stockett, Philemon H. 
Tuck, John S. Wirt, Dr. T. Barton Brune, and Dr. James D. 
Iglehart, Rev. Dr. Orlando Hutton, and Mr. Philip R. Voor- 
hees. An historical sketch of the college was read by the 
latter gentleman, after which followed a centennial ode by 
Rev. J. M. Leavitt, D. D., and an address by the Rev. Leigh- 
ton Parks, D. D., of Boston, an alumnus of the college. 



wwwmiiiw'w 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 45 

After the benediction had been pronounced by Rev. C. K. 
Nelson, D. D., the commemorative tree was planted on the 
college campus by Mrs. Jackson, wife of Governor Jackson. 
At the close of the ceremony an artillery salute of twelve 
guns was fired in honor of the event by the college corps. 

Toward the close of 1891 the Board of Visitors authorized 
President Fell to initiate a movement for the formation of an 
endowment fund. In furtherance of this project an open let- 
ter was sent to each alumnus, inviting them to subscribe a 
sum of $10,000, which has been responded to by them in a 
gratifying manner. Contributions have also been received 
from others interested in the welfare of this venerable insti- 
tution, so that a fair beginning has been made toward placing 
it upon a sounder financial basis than it has hitherto enjoyed. 

President Fell, in his last report submitted to the Board of 
Visitors, says that the number of students on the roll for the 
present session, 1892-93, amounts to 174, and that in all the 
literary departments of the college able and progressive work 
is being accomplished. 

A more prosperous era appears, therefore, to have dawned 
upon this the third oldest college of the United States, and 
that in spite of the numberless vicissitudes which have marked 
its career it can claim to be ranked among the leading edu- 
cational institutions of the land. 

Philip R. Voorhees. 



SOCIAL, LITERARY, AND ATHLETIC 
FEATURES OF 

STUDENT LIFE AT ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 



I 




" 



OFFICERS OF THE COLLEGE CADET CORPS, 1891-92. 



SOCIAL, LITERARY AND ATHLETIC FEATURES 
OF STUDENT LIFE AT ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

BY OSBORNE I. YELLOTT, '9I. 

The social and athletic features of St. John's that struck me 
most forcibly after my matriculation ^at that venerable insti- 
tution were combined in a certain intangible organization 
known as " The Grand Order of Heptasophs." My first lit- 
erary venture followed my introduction to the Order at the 
earliest practical hour the following morning, and consisted 
of a plaintive note to the nearest druggist for two bars of 
sapolio or other good scouring soap, a plentiful supply of 
vaseline, liniments, and any other articles of a similar nature 
that might be expected to prove effective in removing French 
blacking and bruises of various sizes from the major portion 
of my anatomy. 

The Grand Order of Heptasophs, I learned, was of exceed- 
ingly ancient origin, and, like all things ancient, deserving of 
respect. We, the initiated, lugubriously kissed the rod that 
chastened, and thenceforth became devoted followers and 
respecters of the Order, in the measure corresponding with 
our sufferings. Nevertheless, with all my old respect for the 
now defunct institution, I could not help sighing with relief 
out of sympathy for unmatriculated generations as I saw the 
Order dissolve into tradition at the repeated blows dealt it by 
the Faculty and humanity in general. With the apparent 
decadence in class feeling the college world over, hazing does 
not seem to be so much of a necessity in college life as it 
once was; and although the present day freshman may be a 
little less humble than the model freshman of old, his small 
departures from the beaten path of humility are not the same 
slight to sophomorical dignity as they were when the fresh- 



50 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

man bore the magnitudinal relation of mouse to the sopho- 
more lion — from the lion's point of view. 

My class, '91, occupied a neutral position between two 
epochs in the history of the college. With the class of '90 
went out the old traditions, the old men, and the old spirit, 
memories and relics of the times when seniors lorded it over 
the lower classmen, and received the homage due them by 
reason of their age, birth, and previous condition of servitude. 
Even now I recall with what horror I hearkened on the night 
of my arrival at college to the terrible tales of " Buck " and 
" Mike," of the bloody doings of years gone by, when haz- 
ing, fighting and incendiarism seemed to be the chief aims of 
a college student's life. I confess that I wondered at the 
marvelous transition that must have come over the lives of 
men among whose names I recognized some of the leading 
jurists, ministers, and conservators of the peace, welfare and 
dignity of our State. 

The class of '92 ushered in the new era of modern educa- 
tional methods, lectures, elective studies, advanced classes in 
certain branches, and other reforms instituted by Dr. Fell and 
the faculty within the last few years. The spirit of the new 
era, if less one of lawlessness and unconcentrated college en- 
thusiasm, and withal not so filled with material for subse- 
quent pleasant reminiscences, seems, nevertheless, more con- 
ducive to the real ends of college life. 

In these days, so much have customs altered, the freshman 
is frequently met at the railway station by some kind-hearted 
fellow, detailed for the purpose by the Y. M. C. A., and is 
quickly made at ease by introducing him to men of the steady 
set, who make it their business to see that he is pleasantly 
installed in his rooms and otherwise made to feel at home. 
He then enters upon his college life provided with friends 
and associates who will enable him to form the basis of a suc- 
cessful career. 

Student life at St. John's could not have been much differ- 
ent from that at any other college that has been in existence 
for any length of time. We had our secret societies, our de- 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 51 

bating clubs, our athletic clubs, our dance committees, our 
editorial boards, in all of which the student, ambitious to stand 
well in the eyes of his fellow-students, could test their real 
opinion of him by becoming a candidate for an office or place 
on a committee. 

The two secret societies were founded nearly thirty years 
ago, and number in their joint membership all the desirable 
men in the college. The elder is the Philokalian; the 
younger, the Philomathean. None of the Greek letter 
Fraternities are represented at St. John's. Just exactly why, 
it would be hard to determine. The most probable reason is 
that a few years after the foundation of the College, the State 
of Maryland withdrew a large portion of its promised sup- 
port, and up to within a few years ago the institution has had 
a hard struggle for existence. Under such a state of affairs, 
the students were never found who would undertake the ex- 
pense of organizing a chapter of one of the larger fraternities. 
Under its present able management, the college is rapidly 
forging ahead in public confidence, and despite the fact that 
the State is still not very generous in her appropriations, St. 
John's is rapidly building for itself a solid foundation, so 
that its future growth and prosperity bid fair to soon be be- 
yond question. 

St. John's offers unusual facilities to students desirous of 
perfecting themselves in the various athletic sports. A large 
campus in front of the college buildings is admirably adapted 
to use for tennis, which is therefore a popular game with the 
students. This space is literally covered with nets in the 
afternoons and all day Saturday. Added spice and zest is 
given to the game by the presence of favorite members of the 
other sex recruited from the ranks of Annapolis society. An- 
nual tournaments are held, and there is the usual interest 
taken in practising for these events. In the rear of the build- 
ings a number of dirt courts have been made, and here the 
professors and those of the students who have become more 
proficient in the game, play from dinner until dusk. 

College Creek, fifty yards in the rear of the enclosed foot- 



52 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

ball and baseball ground, offers a lengdi and breadth suffi- 
cient to induce the most expert swimmer to partake of its 
cooling comfort. As soon as the sun has nearly completed 
its day's work, the creek becomes alive with the students, and 
any amount of ducking consistent with immunity from capi- 
tal punishment is in order, A few hundred yards from the 
bathing shore the creek runs into the Severn, one of the 
most picturesque rivers on the coast. Here the boating 
crews contend for the supremacy. This year a strong team 
is practising in the new four-oared shell, with good prospects 
of coming out well in local contests. 

A little farther up the river there are quiet nooks for picnic 
parties, and innumerable coves furnish irresistible attractions 
for a mild flirtation, when the man at the helm is no man at 
alL One-day excursion resorts are found still farther up the 
river, connected by rail with Baltimore and Washington, and 
very enjoyable launch parties are made up of college students 
and townspeople to these points and back. Nothing can be 
imagined more absolutely satisfying to a man's inner craving 
for the beautiful and sentimental than an hour's run home 
from one of these outings on a moonlight night, with the 
proper accessory in the way of humanity. Never is the Sev- 
ern lovelier, or the gentle swish of the water at the bow more 
likely to lead the college man to believe that all life, with the 
partner at his side, would be the same harmonious drifting, 
their love as unending and softly bright as the quiet river 
stretching miles upward toward the west, until lost to view 
in the deepening shadows cast by the surrounding hills. He 
hesitates to speak lest he break the happy silence, and is 
saved. A moment later the launch bumps against the wharf, 
all ashore is sounded, and after seeing his shipmate home, he 
reaches college to find that he is too late for inspection, and 
must take three demerits, or waste half an hour's sleep in- 
venting some excuse for his absence. After half an hour's 
thought, of which the demerits get the last minute or so, he 
gets up, turns on the electric light, takes a picture from his 
dressing-case, and for another half-hour studies it carefully. 



:.u:m. 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 53 

presumably meditating whether the president of the college 
would accept that as a good excuse. 

In the other direction the Severn broadens rapidly for two 
miles, until it runs into the Chesapeake. This direction is 
more favorable for sailing parties, and nearly every afternoon 
Captain Burtgis, his cat-boats and sloops, are called into 
requisition by the students and their friends in the town. 

In the winter the same waters furnish a wide and smooth 
expanse for skating, and this sport is not one of the least of 
the many enjoyed by students of St. John's. Every winter 
the creek is frozen over, and in many winters the Severn and 
the bay are also frozen, and furnish good skating for the 
more ambitious. 

Like every other college in the country, St. John's has its 
baseball team. In late years the team has not met with its 
former success, and the game is not, therefore, as popular as 
it once was. By the energy of the students during the last 
few years, a large portion of the rear campus has been en- 
closed by a high fence, and the guarantees to other teams, 
and expenses of the college team, are largely defrayed from 
the receipts from exhibition games played on these grounds. 

But football is the game dearest to the hearts of St. John's 
students, and it is the game around which most of the athletic 
traditions of the college hang. Schofif, the late captain of 
the University of Pennsylvania team, captained St. John's 
team of 'Sq-'qo, and led it on to the unquestioned champion- 
ship of the South. For once the team, made up from the 
smaller number of college students, walked away with the 
Naval Cadets. The feat that had been unsucceSofuUy tried 
for years had at last been accomplished, and loud was the 
rejoicing thereat. The college ordnance was brought out of 
its mouldering shed, and the dust and rust shaken from it by 
successive firings until long into the night. Bonfires were 
built and fired, and their lurid glare lit up as motley a crowd 
as was ever seen. Men who had tired themselves out with 
the shouting, tooting of horns, and marching, had gone to 
bed, repented of it, and come out again with overcoats over 



54 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

nothing, or, at most, but little, to join in the rejoicing once 
more. Men who had never drank before, now pledged each 
other's health in schooners or buckets, as they came handier. 
For days, and even weeks, the martial step of the students 
must have gladdened the heart of the military instructor. 
But the next year, sad to relate, the cadets practised up their 
hardest, and turned the tables on us, and, still more sad, have 
been doing the same thing each year since. But the college 
men still talk of some of Schoffs or Trenchard's rushes of 
that memorable year, or how Herby or Piute forced the 
cadets' center and made a touch-down. The step now is not 
quite so martial as it once was, but the material is there, and 
the boys still have hopes of gaining their old-time ascendancy 
over the cadets. A new gymnasium has been built in the last 
few years, and the prospective football players exercise as- 
siduously to keep their muscles in condition for the contests 
of the next fall. 

In a social way St. John's possesses unusual advantages. 
Situated on the very edge, if not within, the city of Annapo- 
lis, whose older families are among the first in the State, the 
students are able to derive much benefit from its social ad- 
vantages, and at the same time add considerable life to the 
entertainments, and give others in return. The president of 
the college. Dr. Fell, and his wife, who is beloved by the 
students and townspeople alike, give an annual reception to 
which all their acquaintances and the students are invited. 
Throughout the year the students give a series of germans, 
and the Annapolitans more than reciprocate by occasional 
dances in the town halls, and by teas, card parties and recep- 
tions at their own homes. The Governor of the State comes 
to Annapolis for several months every other winter, and 
many of the students are invited to the dances and recep- 
tions given in the executive mansion. Every other winter, 
while the Legislature is in session, the city is especially gay 
in a social way, and numbers of Baltimore and Washington 
belles come down to the various dances given in the town, 
at the Naval Academy and at the college. 



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ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 55 

The most pleasant months of the entire year to the student 
socially inclined are the months of May and June. During 
the former month and the first week of the latter the Naval 
Cadets have their commencement exercises. Swarms of 
beautiful women from all over the country come down to 
Annapolis to be present at these exercises. Many who have 
come down to the dances given every Saturday night at the 
Academy, and have made friends and acquaintances among 
the cadets, now come to see them at their best before they 
leave on their summer cruise or vacation for the summer. 
Discipline at the college is somewhat relaxed during this 
period, and the students have little difficulty in finding time 
to get down to the Academy to see the more interesting of 
the drills. At night an informal hop in the boathouse or a 
promenade concert is in order, and the girls who would re- 
fuse to go into a ballroom without a chaperone now stroll 
the dimly-lighted Academy grounds with a cadet or student, 
whose sole object seems to be alone in crowds. So far is this 
desire carried, that in the morning a tell-tale ladder may dis- 
close a forgotten fan or glove on some otherwise inaccessible 
spot like the top of the observatory. Then comes the fa- 
mous June ball, to which thousands of invitations are sent 
out, and over a thousand responded to in person. 

The Academy exercises over, many of the fair ones who 
have come down to see the cadets find they have made 
friends among the college students, and now stay to the final 
exercises at the college. These consist of the usual gradua- 
tion exercises and class-day proceedings, at the latter of 
which all the follies and indiscretions committed by a man 
from his entrance to the close of his college career are shown 
up by the class historian to make him laughed at by the 
people who would otherwise have respected him as a sensible 
man. The societies give annual entertainments during com- 
mencement week, and dances are given every night. 

Thus the college year ends up in a round of festivities. 
The hard work, the long hours of study, the struggles for 
supremacy in class, the petty jealousies between leaders, the 



56 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

little misunderstandings between professors and students — 
all are forgotten in the pleasure of being a participant in the 
universal holiday, and the pain of knowing that it is for the 
last time. The college may be small, but the friendships are 
the more general and the warmer, the feeling of brotherhood 
the more intense; it may be poor, but we have the more 
reason to be grateful for the advantages we have derived 
from it; it may not have all the modem facilities that other 
colleges have, but we have been accustomed to none other, 
and have learned to love those we had. 

The final exercises over, the student packs his books and 
baggage, and goes around to bid adieu to his friends in the 
town. The last and saddest adieus of all are yet to be made, 
— those to his classmates and fellow-graduates. A tear may 
be excused now, as men who have gone through four of the 
most impressionable years of their lives, — years when, if 
ever, characters are made, and the warmest attachments gen- 
erated, meet to say farewell, in many cases for all time to 
come. Other friends may be made, but none who have 
grown to pardon your failings as you were contracting them, 
none who will so thoroughly know at one time all the good 
and bad that is in you, and still find something to make them 
your friends. 

As you look back for the last time, you come to realize 
how much you have really grown to love the college. You 
feel an unbounded gratitude towards the old buildings which 
have stood there for more than a century, and are no whit the 
greater or the less for all they have done for you, and the 
hundreds of graduates they have sent out like you, more or 
less fitted for their struggle against the world for their daily 
bread. You look at the railroad men, the workmen in the 
car with you, the busy-looking lawyer going back to Balti- 
more from the Court of Appeals, as your new brothers, your 
co-workers; but how different from your brothers you have 
just left; how little is there in common between you and 
these. A feeling of home-sickness and loneliness comes into 
your heart as you feel that you have left for good your real 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 57 

home, and are now out in the world to make not a home, but 
a place among men for whose opinions you must cultivate a 
regard, and whose friendship can never be half so disinter- 
ested or whole-souled as that of your bitterest class rival at 
college. 



J 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

OF 

PRESIDENTS OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 

1790-1894 




O'Za-..^^. 



1790-1806. 



Presidents 



of 



St. John's College 




Before 



the 



Civil War. 



REV. BETHEL JUDD, D. D., 1807-1812. 




^4 ec^ MI^^^-^4,4^-^^ 




(^!^^^^., 



1831-1857. 



1857-1861, 



JOHN McDowell, ll.d. (1790). 

John McDowell, first president of St. John's College, was 
born at Monaghan, Pa., in 1771. He received the degree of 
A. B. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1789, was at 
once appointed professor of mathematics at St. John's Col- 
lege, and the following year made principal of the institution. 
The Rev. Ralph Higginbotham, a native of Ireland, and 
graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, was vice-president. 
Mr. Higginbotham had been head master of King William's 
School when it was incorporated with St. John's, and in 
addition to performing the duties of vice-president of the 
new institution, also filled the chair of ancient languages. 
In 1806 Dr. McDowell accepted the professorship of natural 
philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania, and retired 
from the rectorship of St. John's. In 1807 he received the 
degree of LL. D. from the university, and the same year 
was appointed provost. In 1810, on account of ill-health, 
Dr. McDowell resigned both his offices. In 1818 he was 
awarded the degree of D. D. by Union College. He died 
in 1820. 

REV. BETHEL JUDD, D. D. (1807). 

Bethel Judd, second president of St. John's College, was 
bom at Watertown, Conn., about 1776. He was graduated 
from Yale College in 1797. After completing his theologi- 
cal studies, he was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church 
by Bishop Moore in 1798, and was appointed rector of St. 
James' Church, New London, Conn., with which he was con- 
nected for a period of fifteen years. He subsequently went 
to North Carolina to promote the interests of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in the South, and established a success- 
ful missionary station at St. Augustine, Fla. In 1807, 



62 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

Dr. Judd was elected president of St. John's College. 
Private subscriptions to the amount of $10,000 were col- 
lected; and to provide a permanent fund for "the further 
encouragement and establishment of the said college," the 
legislature enacted that "the sum of ii75o current money 
be annually and forever thereafter given and granted as a 
donation by the public to the use of the said college." The 
college naturally flourished, and yearly sent forth as her 
alumni, young men who were subsequently distinguished in 
the history of Maryland and Virginia. In January, 1806, the 
legislature, by a majority of only eight votes, withdrew the 
college's annuity, in consequence of which the visitors and 
governors were compelled to announce its temporary sus- 
pension. During Dr. Judd's rectorship his annuity was not 
paid, but the college prospered under his skillful manage- 
ment. He was rector of St. Anne's Church from September 
1st, 1807 to October 23d, 181 1. He retired from the presi- 
dentship of St. John's in 181 2, and went to North Carolina, 
thence to Connecticut. In 1828 he removed to Ithaca, N. 
Y.. and in 1848 was sent as missionary to Augustine, Fla. 
In 1850 he was living in Rochester, N. Y. 

REV. HENRY LYON DAVIS, D. D. (1820). 

Henry Lyon Davis, third president of St. John's College, 
was bom about 1775, near Elkton, Md. He matriculated at 
Dickinson College, from which he was graduated when he 
was but eighteen years old, and subsequently became pro- 
fessor of Latin and Greek in that institution. In 1790 he 
was appointed vice-principal and teacher of mathematics at 
Charlotte Hall Academy, St. Mary's Co., Md. He retained 
his position until November, 1802, having meanwhile been 
ordained a deacon in the P. E. Church by Bishop Claggett, 
who appointed him rector of All Faith Parish, St. Mary's 
Co. He afterwards had charge of King and Queen's Parish 
for a time, and in 1802 was appointed rector of Trinity Parish, 
Charles Co., and in 1804 of St. Stephen's, in Cecil Co., where 
he remained until 181 5, when he was called to take charge of 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 63 

St. Ann's Parish, Annapolis, Md. For the following eleven 
years he was placed on the standing committee of the West- 
em Shore, having previously filled a like position on the 
Eastern Shore. On February 19, 1816, Mr. Davis was 
elected vice-president of St. John's College, Annapolis, and 
in 1 81 8 was appointed to the chair of mathematics, and June 
20, 1820, elected president of the institution. On October 
13th, 1 82 1, he resigned the office of president, and severed 
his connection with St. John's College. During the remain- 
der of the time that he resided at Annapolis, in connection 
with the duties of his pastorate, he taught a class of private 
pupils. On June 8, 1826, he retired from the rectorship of 
St. Ann's Church, and removed to Delaware, where he be- 
came president of the college at Wilmington. He subse- 
quently held pastorates at Elkton and Georgetown, Md. He 
was a member of the standing committee of the P. E. Church, 
Diocese of Maryland, for twenty-two successive years, and 
was for eleven years its president, and for eight years was 
secretary of the Diocesan Convention of Maryland, and in 
1803 was delegate to the General Convention and preached 
the Convention sermon. Dr. Davis was a man of much 
learning, of vigorous intellect and commanding personal 
presence. He was married in 181 9 to Jane Winter, of Fred- 
ericktown, Md. She was a lineal descendant of the Wynters 
or Wyntours of Charles Co., Md., who settled in the province 
with the earliest emigrants. Dr. H. Lyon Davis was awarded 
the honorary degree of D. D. from Dickinson College in 
1820. He died at Georgetown, Md., in 1837. 

REV. WILLIAM RAFFERTY, D. D. (1824). 

William Rafiferty, fourth president of St. John's College, 
was bom in Ireland. But little is known of his early his- 
tory. In 1 81 9 he was elected professor of ancient languages 
at St. John's College, and in 1820 vice-president, holding that 
office until 1824, when he succeeded Dr. H. Lyon Davis as 
president. He retained the presidency until 1831. Dr. 
Rafferty was an accomplished Latin and Greek scholar. 



64 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

REV. HECTOR HUMPHREYS, D. D. (1831). 

Hector Humphreys, fifth president of St. John's College, 
was bom at Canton, Conn., June 8, 1797. He began his 
Latin studies with James Hotchkiss, teacher of the high 
school in his native village in 181 1, and completed his pre- 
paratory work at Westfield Academy, Mass., and was grad- 
uated from Yale College, v/ith the first honors of his class, in 
1 81 8. After taki::g his degree he decided to become a law- 
yer, and, with this object in view, he accepted an appointment 
to teach the Hopkins Academy in New Haven. He re- 
tained this charge two years, devoting part of his time to the 
stuiy of law. oubsequently being admitted to the bar, he 
opened an office in New Haven, and at the end of one year 
thereafter he was appointed Judge Advocate for the State by 
Gov. Wolcott. Circumstances induced him to abandon the 
profession which he had entered so auspiciously and to be- 
come a candidate for the ministry. He pursued his theo- 
logical studies, and in 1824 was admitted to the order of 
deacon in Trinity Church, New Haven, by Bishop Brownell. 
He was at once appointed tutor at Washington (now 
Trinity) College, Hartford, and the following year was made 
professor of ancient languages. During his connection with 
Washington College he officiated as rector of St. Luke's 
Church, Glastonbury, a town near Hartford. In 1831 he was 
called to the presidency of St. John's College, Annapolis, and 
from that time until his death his name and fame were iden- 
tified with the history and progress of St. John's. By his 
persevering efforts and personal influence with the members 
of the legislature, that body, in response to a memorial of the 
visitors and governors, added $2000 to the annuity, provided 
the visitors and governors should agree to accept the 
same "in full satisfaction of all legal or equitable claims 
they might have or be supposed to have against the State." 
The college was glad to have even this small amount, that it 
might not be obliged to suspend. The board consented, and 
the deed of release was executed and entered upon the 
records of the Court of Appeals. At the same time the Gov- 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 65 

ernor of the State, President of the Senate, Speaker of the 
House of Delegates and Judges of the Court of Appeals 
were made ex-ofiicio members of the board, thus irrevocably 
giving the college the character of a State institution. In 
1833 3. committee of the legislature was appointed to visit the 
college, and the same year Dr. Humphreys received the de- 
gree of LL. D. from Trinity College. The visitors and gov- 
ernors, encouraged by these marks of legislative approval, 
authorized the president to collect subscriptions for the erec- 
tion of additional buildings for the library and philosophical 
apparatus, and appointed a committee to co-operate with him 
in carrying this resolution into effect. In a short time 
$ii,ooo were secured, and in June, 1835, the corner-stone of 
Humphreys Hall was laid. In 1840 a committee of the 
Maryland Convention nominated Dr. Humphreys for Bishop, 
but he declined the nomination. He was married March 15, 
1820, to Marie, the daughter of Stephen and Clarisse Quin- 
tard, of Norwalk, Conn. Six children were born to them, 
three sons and three daughters. In 1855, St. John's College 
was reorganized, and the same year Pinkney Hall was erected. 
Dr. Humphreys, while president of St. John's, delivered in 
the annual course about 108 lectures, besides attending to 
the recitations of each day. Notsvithstanding his various 
oiiicial duties, he was a frequent contributor to scientific 
journals, and was ever ready to help his clerical brethren. 
He died at St. John's College, Annapolis, June 25, 1857. 

REV. CLELAND K. NELSON, D. D. (1857-61). 

Cleland Kinloch Nelson, sixth president of St. John's Col- 
lege, was born in Albemarle County, Va., in 1814, of an old 
and distinguished family. His grandfather, Thomas Nelson 
of Yorktown, was one of the early Governors of Virginia. 
His father, Thomas Hugh Nelson, was one of the Speakers 
of the Virginia House of Delegates, a presidential elector in 
1809, representative to Congress from 181 1 to 1823, and 
after the expiration of his last term, Minister to Spain under 
President Monroe. The subject of this sketch received his 



I 



66 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

early education in Virginia, subsequently entered Dickinson 
College, Pa., from which he was graduated, and went to the 
Episcopal Seminary near Alexandria for his theological 
studies, and was ordained there by Bishop Meade in 1838. 
His first parish was in Albemarle Co., Va., but he resigned 
this charge to become rector of a church at Marlboro', Md. 
He was next appointed pastor of St. Ann's Church, Annap- 
olis, Md., and held this pastorate until he was called to the 
\ presidency of St. John's College in 1857. He successfully 
\ administered the duties of ^ this office until 1861, when the 
\ college was broken up on account of the Civil War. Dr. 
Nelson thereupon took charge of the parish of All Hallows, 
\ on South River, in Anne Arundel Co., Md. In 1866 the 
legislature restored to St. John's College the arrearages of 
the annuity of $3000 suspended from 1861 to 1866, and ap- 
propriated an additional sum of $12,000 for five years, to date 
from June i, 1868. The college buildings which had been 
used as a hospital during the Civil War, were put in thorough 
repair, and when St. John's was reorganized, in 1867, Dr. 
Nelson was again appointed president. After a short period 
of active service he rested for a time, and then took charge of 
the Rockville Academy, Md., a position which he subse- 
quently resigned on account of ill health. He was an able 
Latin and Greek scholar, and well known outside of Mary- 
land and Virginia through his contributions to the Church 
periodicals. He died at Bel voir, Sherwood Station, Md., 
Oct. 30, 1890. 

HENRY BARNARD, LL. D. (1866). 

Henry Barnard, seventh president of St. John's College, 
was born in Hartford, Ct, Jan. 24, 181 1. His family had 
resided at Hartford from the first settlement of the colony. 
Henry was prepared for college at Monson, Mass., and at the 
Hopkins Grammar School in Hartford, and was graduated 
from Yale College with distinction in 1830. He subse- 
quently studied law, and in 1835 was admitted to the bar, but 
before commencing the practice of his profession he went to 



«*< 




•^ib»-»^./^i«'>>t ay\yaf^' 



1866-1867. 



Presidents 



of 



St. John's College 




1867-1870. 




Since 



th( 



Civil War. 



THOMAS FELL, 1886- 




/^ 







/■ 



'^■TP^/f 



1870-1880. 



1880-1884. 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 67 

Europe for travel and study. From 1837-40 he was a mem- 
ber of the Connecticut Legislature, and during his term of 
service in this body advocated reforms in insane asylums, 
prisons, and the common schools. " He originated and se- 
cured the passage by the Legislative Assembly of the resolu- 
tion requiring the Comptroller to obtain from school visitors 
official returns respecting public schools, in the several school 
societies," and in 1838 of an " act to provide for the better 
supervision of common schools " ; school houses of better con- 
struction, a normal academy, high schools, etc., were estab- 
lished by his efforts. Dr. Barnard was also active in having 
these reforms introduced into other States. From 1838 to 
1842 he was secretary of the board of school commissioners 
in Connecticut; from 1842 to 1849 school commissioner of 
Rhode Island; from 1850-54 superintendent of the Connecti- 
cut State schools, and from 1857-59 president of the State 
University of Wisconsin. In 1865 he was appointed presi- 
dent of St. John's College. He reorganized several of its 
departments, and took active measures to restore its prestige. 
He resigned the presidency in 1867, and was appointed U. S. 
Commissioner of Education, holding that office until 1870. 
In that position he did effective work, both in Connecticut 
and Rhode Island. In the latter place, where for a period of 
200 years no taxation for school purposes had been allowed, 
he entirely changed public opinion, and a system of education 
was adopted as complete as that in vogue in many of the 
New England States. During his stay in Rhode Island he 
issued the Rhode Island " School Journal," and while serving 
as secretary of the Connecticut School Board he founded the 
Connecticut " Common School Journal." As early as 1855 
he commenced the publication of the "American Journal of 
Education." He has brought out a number of works on 
educational subjects, and in 1886 published a collected edition 
of his works, entitled " The American Library of Schools and 
Education." It comprised fifty-two volumes and over 800 
original treatises, each one of which is also published sepa- 
rately. Dr. Barnard received the degree of LL. D. from 
Yale and Union in 1851, and in 1852 from Harvard. He 



68 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 



has, during latter yearj, devoted himself to the revision of his 
works, and has recently received a proposition for the pur- 
chase of the plates of the "American Journal of Education," 
whereby the dissemination of his writings may be greatly 
facilitated. 



JAMES C WELLING, LL. D. (1867). 

James Clark Welling, eighth president of St. John's Col- 
lege, was born in Trenton, N. J., July 14th, 1825. He was 
graduated from Princeton College in 1844, and subsequently 
studied law, but abandoned his profession to accept the asso- 
ciate principalship of the New York Collegiate School in 
1848, a position which he held until 1850, when he was ap- 
pointed literary editor of the " Nation's Intelligencer.'^ In 
1865 he withdrew from journalism and traveled for a year in 
Europe. His editorship of the " Intelligencer '^ had covered 
the critical period of the Civil War, and the Union found in 
him a warm supporter. He was a firm adherent of the old 
line whigs, and in i860 he voted the Bell-Everett ticket. His 
views coincided with those of President Lincoln on the sub- 
ject of emancipation. He believed in indemnifying loyal 
holders of slaves, and advocated the abolition of slavery in 
the District of Columbia and throughout the Union by con- 
stitutional amendment, but he questioned the validity of the 
emancipation proclamation. Dr. Welling strongly opposed 
the trial of citizens in loyal States by a military commission, 
and had the satisfaction of seeing his views upheld when the 
Supreme Court condemned this practice as illegal. He 
wrote elaborate articles for the " Intelligencer " on the dis- 
cussions of the day, vv^hich involved questions of interna- 
t'onal or constitutional law. These articles exerted a power- 
ful influence on public opinion. Many of them were repub-- 
lished and are yet quoted in books of jurisprudence and his- 
tory. Dr. Welling's judicial mind, accurate scholarship and 
ease in writing particularly fitted him to wield a powerful and 
influential pen during the critical period of the Civil War. 
After his return from Europe, he accepted a position as clerk 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 69 

in the U. S. Court of Claims, which he held until he was 
appointed president of St. John's College. In 1867 a great 
impetus was given to the college when Dr. Welling suc- 
ceeded to the presidential chair. The number of students 
was augmented from 90 to 250, the standard of studies 
raised, and when he resigned he left matters in a most flour- 
ishing condition. In 1868 he received the honorary degree^ 
of LL. D. from Columbia College, Washington, D. C, and 
in 1870 retired from the presidency of St. John's to accept the 
professorship of belles-lettres at Princeton. He held this 
position for one year, at the expiration of which he was 
elected president of Columbia College (now university), and 
still holds that position. Under his presidency the college 
has been enlarged, a new building has been erected in the 
center of Washington city, and Congress has granted a new 
charter. Dr. Welling has laid the foundation of a free en- 
dowment, added new professional schools, and in a number 
of ways contributed to the advancement and prosperity of 
the institution. He is president of the board of trustees of 
the Corcoran Gallery, and is connected with a number of 
literary and scientific societies. In 1887 he went abroad in 
the interest of the Corcoran Gallery, visiting the principal 
artists in Europe. In 1884 he was appointed regent of the 
Smithsonian Institute, and was subsequently elected chair- 
man of its executive committee, and in 1884 he was made 
president of the Philosophical Society of Washington. He 
is also a member of the Anthropological Society of that city, 
and has contributed valuable papers to the published pro- 
ceedings of both bodies. He has written considerably for 
the leading periodicals of the day, and is president of the 
Copyright League of the District of Columbia. 

JAMES M. GARNETT, M. A., LL. D. (1870). 

James Mercer Garnett, ninth president of St. John's Col- 
lege, was born at Aldie, Loudon Co., Va., April 24, 1840. 
His mother was a daughter of Francisco Morens, of Pen- 
sacola, Fla., consul for Spain at that city, and his father, 



70 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

Theodore S. Gamett, was the son of James Mercer Gamett, 
of Ehnwood, Essex Co., Va., a congressman and a member 
of the State Constitutional Convention in 1829. His great- 
grandfather, James Mercer Garnett, was Judge of the Court 
of Appeals of Virginia, and a member of the State Conven- 
tion of 1776. The subject of this sketch passed his early 
days in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Soutii Carolina, Florida, 
Kentucky, and North Carolina, and at the age of thirteen 
entered the Episcopal High School of Virginia, where he 
remained four years, being graduated with the first honors. 
In 1857 he entered the University of Virginia, from which 
he was graduated with the degree of Master of Arts in 1859, 
returning in i860 for a post-graduate course. At the out- 
break of the Civil War he joined one of the two military 
companies formed among the students, and in July, 1861, he 
entered the Confederate army as a private in the Rockbridge 
Artillery, attached to the brigade of Gen. Stonewall Jackson. 
Mr. Garnett took part in the first battle of Manassas, and 
served with distinction until the close of the war, surrendering 
with the division commanded by Maj.-Gen. R. Rodes, at 
Appomattox Court House, April 9, 1865. In September of 
that year he began teaching at Charlottesville, Va. In 1867 
he was appointed professor of Greek in the State University, 
near Alexandria, La., resigning the position to become in- 
structor in ancient languages and mathematics in the Epis- 
copal High School of Virginia. In 1869 he went to Ger- 
many, having in view the study of the manners and customs 
of that country, and upon his return in 1870 was appointed 
president of St. John's College, Annapolis, Md. In 1871 he 
married Kate H., a daughter of Maj. Burr S. Noland, of 
Middlebury, Md. Dr. Garnett resigned the presidency of 
St. Johns in 1880, to become the principal of a university 
school at Ellicott City, Md. He filled this position for two 
years, and has since occupied the chair of English language 
and literature at the University of Virginia. He has con- 
tributed occasional articles to the " Educational Journal " of 
Virginia, and to the Maryland " School Journal," and is the 
author of several papers, books and translations. In 1885 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 71 

he read a paper on the elective system of the University of 
Virginia before the International Congress of Educators 
held at New Orleans. This article was reprinted by the 
U. S. Bureau of Education and also published in the And- 
over " Review," in April, 1886. 

REV. J. McDowell leavitt, d. d., ll. d. (isso). 

John McDowell Leavitt, tenth president of St. John's Col- 
lege, was born at Steubenville, O., in 1824. He was pre- 
pared for college in the classical academies of his native 
State, and in 1841 entered Jefferson College, from which he 
was graduated at the age of seventeen with salutatory honors. 
He subsequently studied law with his father and Judge 
Swayne, and after being admitted to the bar, practiced his 
profession for four years, at the expiration of which he went 
to the theological seminary at Gambier, O. He was or- 
dained a priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1848, 
was appointed a professor in Kenyon College shortly after- 
ward, and later a professor at Ohio University. The last 
position he resigned to accept the presidency of Lehigh Uni- 
versity, Bethlehem, Pa. In 1880 he was elected president of 
St. John's College, Md., where he remained four years. 
During his administration he organized a department of 
mechanical engineering and obtained a detail of an engineer 
ofhcer from the U. S. Navy Department as instructor in 
mathematics and engineering. He also started the equip- 
ment of a machine shop for practical instruction. Ohio Uni- 
versity conferred on him the degree of D. D. in 1872, and 
St. John's that of LL. D. in 1889. ^^ was editor of the 
" Church Review " for some years, and founded and edited 
the " International Review." Dr. Leavitt at present holds 
the professorship of ecclesiastical polity and history and 
Christian evidences in the Reformed Episcopal Theological 
Seminary at Philadelphia. Among his published wTitings 
are, " Old World Tragedies from New World Life," " Rea- 
sons for Faith in the Nineteenth Century," "Visions of 
Solyma," and "Hymns to our King." 



72 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

WILLIAM 'H. HOPKINS, Ph.D. (1884). 

William Hersey Hopkins, acting principal of St. John's 
College, and ex-president of the Woman's College of Balti- 
more, was born at Greensborough, Md., Dec. 20, 1841. His 
father, James Hopkins, was a descendant of a Puritan family 
that settled on the Eastern Shore of Maryland before the 
Revolution, and his mother, Elizabeth Clarke Lyden, was a 
daughter of Capt. John Lyden, a mariner, who was lost at 
sea during his daughter's infancy. The subject of this sketch 
entered the preparatory school of St. John's when he was 
twelve years old, his father having previously become a 
resident of Annapolis, Md. In 1855 he w^as advanced to the 
collegiate department, where he pursued the regular classical 
course, holding a leading place in his class throughout his 
collegiate career. In 1859 he was graduated with the degree 
of B. A., taking the first senior prize for excellence in gen- 
eral scholarship, as well as the first honor of his class. In 
his junior year also he won the gold medal as first prizeman 
of his class. Immediately after his graduation, he was ten- 
dered and accepted a position as tutor in the preparatory 
department of his alma mater. During the Civil War, when 
the college was closed, he accepted the principalship of Anne 
Arundel County Academy, and retained that position until 
St. John's was reorganized in 1866, when he resumed his 
former work, being subsequently appointed professor of 
Greek and German. In 1881, under the administration of 
President Leavitt, Professor Hopkins was called to the vice- 
principalship of the college, which he held until the resigna- 
tion of Dr. Leavitt in 1884. Dr. Hopkins was then elected act- 
ing principal. In June, 1886, he resigned from St. John's, 
having been invited to become the organizer of a new enter- 
prise to be known as the Woman's College of Baltimore, an 
institution that was to be established under the auspices of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church. The call provided for a 
trip of one year to Europe to be taken in the interests of the 
new institution. During his administration the college was 
put in thorough working order, and is now one of the best 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 73 

of the denominational schools for women in the country. 
After four years, Dr. Hopkins retired from the presidency of 
the Woman's College, preferring to assume the duties of pro- 
fessor of Greek and Latin. It is a noteworthy fact that Dr. 
Hopkins was called to fill the office of instruction and ad- 
ministration in the service of his alma mater. This is the 
only instance of such an occurrence at St. John's in its his- 
tory of a century. Dr. Hopkins received the degree of 
M. A. from St. John's College, and that of Ph. D. from 
Dickinson. 

THOMAS FELL, Ph.D., LL. D. (1886). 

Thomas Fell, eleventh president of St. John's College, 
Annapolis, Md., was born in England, July 15th, 1851. His 
father was a staff surgeon on board H. M. S. " Brandon," and 
died in the Crimea during the war against Russia in 1855. 
Dr. Fell was educated at the Royal Institution School, Liver- 
pool, Eng., until 1866, after which he entered King's College, 
London, and subsequently matriculated at the London Uni- 
versity. At the close of his collegiate career he traveled for 
some years through Europe, Egypt, India, and China. 

Having determined to settle in America, Dr. Fell received 
his first appointment in this country as professor of ancient 
and modern languages at New Windsor College, Md., and in 
1886 was appointed acting principal of St. John's College, 
Annapolis, Md. He was subsequently advanced in 1888 to 
the presidentship of the college, which position he at present 
(1893) occupies. Under his administration the college has 
emerged from an unfortunate series of vicissitudes, and 
appears now to be entering upon a period of prosperity. 
The number of students has materially increased, and many 
elements of progress and improvement have been fostered 
and developed. An endowment fund has also been initiated 
by him, which promises to be the means of placing the col- 
lege upon a sound financial basis. 

Dr. Fell received the degree of LL. D. in 1889 ^^^^ 
Hampden Sidney College, Va., and also that of Ph. D. from 
St. John's on the occasion of its centennial. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF A FEW 



OF THE 



REPRESENTATIVE ALUMNI OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE 




HON. ALEXANDER RANDALL, B. A. '22, M. A. 

Member of Congress and Attorney-General of Md. 

Trustee cf St. John's College. 



HON. ALEXANDER RANDALL, B. A, M.A. 

Class '22. 

Hon. Alexander Randall, lawyer, and practising his pro- 
fession for fifty-seven years in the courts of Maryland and the 
District of Columbia, was the ninth son of John and Debo- 
rah (Knapp) Randall. He was bom in Annapolis, Maryland, 
in 1803, and died in his native city in 188 1. He was edu- 
cated at St. John's College, from which he graduated, re- 
ceiving the degree of Master of Arts. In this city also he 
studied law with Addison Ridout, and made it his home dur- 
ing a long life. During the last twenty-five years of that 
period, his nephew, Hon. Alexander B. Hagner was his part- 
ner. In 1833 h^ was appointed Auditor of the Court of 
Chancery by Chancellor Bland, and he held that oiifice till 
1840, when he resigned. In 1841 he was elected to the 
twenty-seventh Congress by the Whig voters of the double 
district of Baltimore city and Anne Arundel county, with 
John P. Kennedy. While a member of the House, and of 
the Committee on the District of Columbia, he prepared and 
reported to the House a bill to introduce into the code of the 
District, which was then governed by the laws of Maryland 
and Virginia, all such suitable and important amendments of 
their laws as had been enacted in those States since the sep- 
aration of the District and found to be valuable improve- 
ments. These amendments have since all been adopted into 
the code of the District of Columbia. During the violent 
discussions in that Congress on the right of petition, which 
began or fomented the estrangement between the North and 
the South, and finally led to the Civil War, Mr. Randall, with 
a few Southern members united with those from the North in 
maintaining the constitutional right of petition, and in op- 
posing the twenty-third rule of the House, which abridged it. 
In 1 85 1 he was elected one of the delegates from Anne Arun- 



78 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

del county to meet in convention and form a new constitu- 
tion for the State of Maryland. He there introduced a num- 
ber of very important measures, and was for a time president 
pro tem. of the convention, and was chairman of the com- 
mittee that closed up its proceedings and superintended their 
publication. He united early in the movement of the people 
to elect General Taylor President of the United States. He 
was chosen a delegate from Anne Arundel county to the 
State Convention which met in Baltimore to nominate Gen- 
eral Taylor, and was elected its president. In 1864 the 
Union Party of Maryland nominated and elected Mr. Randall 
Attorney-General of the State, under the constitution of that 
year, which office he continued to hold until it was vacated by 
the new constitution of 1867. He was an active and unwav- 
ering Union man in politics through the Civil War and re- 
construction period, and was a delegate to the National Re- 
publican Convention that met in Philadelphia in 1872 and 
nominated General Grant as President. In 1877 Mr. Ran- 
dall was elected president of the Farmers' National Bank of 
Annapolis, which position he held until his death. He was 
in early life elected a trustee of St. John's College, and there- 
after served in that capacity and gave to his alma mater his 
active and cordial support. He, with other zealous friends 
of. primary school education, organized in Annapolis the 
first primary school in the State under the original law of 
1825, and for many years as clerk, trustee or commissioner 
of these schools gratuitously aided the cause of education. He 
was an active citizen of Annapolis, aiding in all plans calcu- 
lated to advance the interests of the city. By his efforts the 
gaslight and water companies were formed and the plans 
carried into practical and successful execution under his 
management as president. He was early a member of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, and active in the discharge of 
the duties imposed upon him as vestryman, member of the 
Convention of the Diocese, delegate to the General Conven- 
tion, and trustee of the General Theological Seminary. He 
took an early and active part in the temperance reform, and 



■■■■MHPBMHManBMaaHHHnHHHMHMBBI 



"??»v 





HON. WM. HALLAM TUCK, B. A. '27, M. A. 
Senator of Maryland, Judge of Court of Appeals. 



WILLIAM HARWOOD, B. A. '27, M. A. 
Ex-Prof, at U. S. Naval Academy, and State Librarian, 
Trustee of St. John's College. 





DR. ABRAM CLAUDE, B. A. '35, M. A., M. D. 

Ex-Professor of Chemistry. 

Trustee of St. John's College. 



HON. NICHOLAS BREWER, B. A. '46, M. 
Senator of Md. and State Reporter. 
Trustee of St. John's College. 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 79 

was for many years president of the State Temperance So- 
ciety, and was always one of its consistent and zealous mem- 
bers. Mr. Randall first married Catharine, the third daugh- 
ter of William Wirt, who died in 1853, leaving him several 
children. In 1856 he married Elizabeth Philpot, only daugh- 
ter of the Rev. John G. Blanchard, by whom he also had 
children, and at his death he left six sons and six daughters, 
all grown except the two youngest. 

HON. WILLIAM H. TUCK, B.A., M.A. 

Class '27. 

At a meeting of the Trustees of St. John's College held on 
April 14, 1884, Mr. J. S. Stockett, on behalf of the committee 
appointed to draft resolutions on the death of the late Judge 
Tuck, reported the following memorial: 

The Board of Visitors and Governors of St. John's Col- 
lege desire to place on record their estimate of one of their 
number recently deceased. On the evening of the 17th of 
March, 1884, in the city of his birth, and where the greater 
part of his life was spent, William H. Tuck fell asleep. A 
long, useful and highly honorable life was thus closed. He 
had filled many positions, and had won approval for the 
fidelity and ability with which he had discharged their re- 
quirements. The deceased was bom in Annapolis, on the 
20th of November, 1809, and was educated at St. John's 
College, and nobly he repaid in his filial attachment to his 
alma mater her nursing care and liberal training. He grad- 
uated in the class of 1827, than which none more distin- 
guished has ever gone out from the halls of St. John's. He 
selected the legal profession as presenting the most attractive 
field to his youthful ambition and energy. Endowed with a 
clear and vigorous intellect, by diligent and faithful study, by 
careful attention to business, by an agreeable manner and a 
persuasive eloquence he won success. He entered upon his 
professional career in the neighboring county of Prince 
George's, having located himself in Marlboro, and when 
quite young he was elected by those among whom he had 



80 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

made his home as a member of the House of Delegates. He 
was re-elected in the following year, and notwithstanding his 
youth was selected as the presiding officer of the House. 
His popularity, and the high esteem in which he was held by 
his fellow-citizens, can alone explain the fact of his being 
returned, after the interval of a year, successively for the four 
following sessions. The deceased was a member of the 
Constitutional Convention that assembled in November, 
1850, and was made chairman of two important committees; 
and in the discussion of important questions of governmental 
policy, he occupied a conspicuous position among men emi- 
nent in the State. Under the Constitution adopted by this 
Convention, Mr. Tuck was elected a Judge of the Court of 
Appeals from the Second District. He brought to the dis- 
charge of the duties of this high office an admirable temper, 
a mind well stored with the principles of the law, and a capa- 
bility of careful investigation eminently adapted to the func- 
tions of a Judge. In consultation, his associates recognized 
his valuable assistance. His recorded opinions to be found 
in the Maryland Reports command the respect alike of the 
bench and bar. Having completed the term for which he 
was elected a Judge, he resumed the practice of his profes- 
sion in the city of Annapolis. At the bar. Judge Tuck was 
always an attractive speaker. He spoke with ease and flu- 
ency, with clearness and cogency; without any attempt at 
ornament. He addressed himself to the understanding; he 
sought to convince by a forcible presentation of the facts of 
the case, and a logical statement of the principles of the law 
applicable thereto. In his intercourse with his professional 
brethren he was singularly gentle and courteous, and he 
enjoyed in an unusual degree their confidence and esteem. 

On the 24th of October, 1864, Judge Tuck was appointed 
by Governor Bradford Judge of the Second Judicial Circuit 
in the place of Judge Brewer, deceased. This position he 
retained until he was succeeded by Judge Daniel R. Ma- 
gruder, under the decision of the Court of Appeals rendered 
on the 28th of June, 1866, declaring the latter to have been 
duly elected on the 7th of November, 1865. 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 81 

In 1871 Judge Tuck was elected to the State Senate from 
Anne Arundel, and attended the sessions of 1872 and 1874. 
And here, his ripe experience as a public man, his large and 
varied information, his high personal character, his accessi- 
bility, his courteous demeanor and uniform affability, consti- 
tuted him the foremost man. 

There was a feature in the character of the deceased of 
rare attractiveness — his modest appreciation of his own 
talents and learning. Whether as a Judge on the Appellate 
Bench, deciding questions of highest importance in the ad- 
ministration of justice, or in contests at the bar with the 
youngest and least experienced members of the profession, 
he was the same modest, unassuming gentleman. 

In the social circle the deceased was always a welcome 
guest. He was remarkably genial — ^he was a very cheerful 
person — " the snows of age fell, but they did not chill him." 
Possessed of extensive information gathered from many 
sources, he dispensed the same with unstinted liberality. 
Few men of his day had amassed a larger store of the politi- 
cal history of his native State, of which he was himself 
magna pars, or enjoyed a more extensive acquaintance with 
her public men. With many he had been intimate, and a 
retentive memory treasured numerous agreeable incidents of 
their intercourse. It was not an unusual sight to see him in 
the midst of a group of attentive listeners, instructing as well 
as entertaining. 

In fine, the deceased was an excellent lawyer, an ornament 
to his profession, a Vv^ise counsellor, an able and upright 
Judge, an influential and valued citizen, and a sincere and 
steadfast friend. 

WILLIAM HARWOOD, B. A., M. A. 

Class 1827, 
The subject of this sketch was born December 24, 1809, 
and from an early age, when he entered St. John's College as 
a student, his name is closely interwoven with the history of 
this institution. 



82 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

He graduated with the degree of B.A. in 1827, and ob- 
taining the first honors in a class composed of men much 
celebrated in after life, was chosen to deliver the valedic- 
torian address on the day of his graduation. A military- 
company having been first organized about this time among 
the students of the college, he was appointed captain, and 
successfully performed the duties of training and disciplining 
these young cadets. 

After leaving college, he entered the law office of Alexan- 
der Contee Magruder, and was admitted to the bar. 

He relinquished in a few years the profession of law, in 
order to follow the avocation of a teacher, for which he was 
eminently fitted by temperament and high scholastic attain- 
ments, and received the degree of M. A. from his alma mater. 

He was appointed a member of the Board of Visitors and 
Governors of St. John's College in 1873, and acted as hon- 
orary secretary for that body until 1886, when advancing 
years necessitated his relinquishment of active duties, but he 
still maintains his interest in the college by continuing to 
serve as a member of the board. 

NICHOLAS BREWER, B.A., M.A. 

Class 1846. 
Son of Hon. Nicholas Brewer (Judge of the Circuit Court 
of the 5th Judicial Circuit of Maryland, 1837 to 1864), was 
born at Annapolis, Md., 12th July, 1828; he was graduated 
from St. John's College, Annapolis, Md., 22d February, 1846, 
and afterwards pursued a post-graduate course in history and 
the German and Spanish languages at Mt. St. Mary's College, 
Md., in 1846 and 1847; he studied law, and was admitted to 
the bar in 1851, and was Auditor of the Circuit Court, in 
Equity, of the 5th Judicial Circuit of Maryland from 185 1 to 
1861 ; in 1855 he was Mayor of Annapolis, and during several 
years was Recorder, or Counsel, of the Corporation; in 1861 
he received the appointment of clerk in the Treasury De- 
partment of the United States, and was assigned to duty as 
an assistant in the 7 3-10 Loan Office, from which he was 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 83 

transferred in 1862 to the 6th Auditors Office, and placed in 
charge of the accounts and correspondence of the Foreign 
Mail Office for France, Belgium, and Prussia; he held the 
position of State Law Reporter of the Court of Appeals of 
Maryland from 1862 to 1869; he was the Republican candi- 
date for the office of Associate Judge of the 5th Judicial Cir- 
cuit of Maryland in 1883, but was defeated; in 1884 and 1886 
he represented Anne Arundel county and the city of Annap- 
olis in the Maryland State Senate; he has been a member of 
the Board of Visitors and Governors of St. John's College 
since 1858; is a member of the Mar\dand Historical Society, 
President of the Anne Arundel Historical Society, and is 
now engaged in historical and genealogical researches at 
Annapolis. 

Mr. Brewer is a lineal descendant of John Brewer who 
emigrated to the Province of Maryland in 1649 and was 
afterwards a member of the House of Burgesses and a Justice 
of the County Court of Anne Arundel county, whose wife 
was Sarah Ridgely, daughter of Col. Henry Ridgely, who 
came to the Province from Lincolnshire, England, in 1659, 
and during a long life held many positions of honor and 
trust, among them that of member of the Provincial Council. 

PHILIP RANDALL VOORHEES, B. A., M. A. 

Class '55. 

It is not often that a man in maturity, successful in one 
walk of life, deliberately leaves it for another. Although 
examples are to be met with in our metropolitan city, it gen- 
erally happens that it is a profession which has been aban- 
doned for business pursuits, and not one profession for 
another. 

Descended from distinguished ancestry, related to the 
families which have made his State famous, Mr. Philip Ran- 
dall Voorhees was bom October nth, 1835, '^^ Annapolis, 
Maryland. 

Four generations, great-grandfather, grandfather, father 
and son have served as officers in the defence of their coun- 



84 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

try. One grandfather, John Voorhees of New Jersey, would 
have starved to death while imprisoned in New York, in the 
historically fearful Provost Prison, had it not been for the 
kindly offices of a patriotic woman. 

The other, John Randall, after serving throughout the 
war of the Revolution, was appointed, by President Wash- 
ington, the first Collector of Annapolis. 

Commodore Philip F. Voorhees, the father of Mr. Voor- 
hees, received a medal from Congress for his services as a 
naval officer in the war of 1812, under Decatur and Warring- 
ton, being with the former in the capture of the Macedonian 
by the frigate United States, and with the latter in the cap- 
ture by the Peacock of the sloops-of-war Epervier and Nau- 
tilus. He commanded some of the finest ships of the old 
navy, notably the frigate Congress, on her maiden cruise in 
1842-45, and the East India squadron in 1850-51. 

Carefully prepared by private tutors, Mr. Voorhees entered 
St. John's College, at Annapolis, and was graduated in 1855 
with the degree of A. B., and later on took the ^ degree of 
A. M. 

After graduation, he studied law, in Annapolis, in the 
office of his uncle, the Hon. Alexander Randall, Attorney- 
General of Maryland. 

He then took a practical course in Mechanical and Marine 
Engineering, at the Vulcan Iron Works, Baltimore, and, 
after a competitive examination in i860, was in February, 
1 86 1, appointed an officer in the Engineer Corps of the navy. 
During the Civil War he served in the frigate Wabash at the 
battles of Hatteras Inlet, Port Royal, and both attacks upon 
Fort Fisher; and served also in the gunboat Huron in the 
attacks upon the approaches to Wilmington, in the Cape 
Fear River, and was still one of the officers in her, in the 
James River fleet, at the fall of Richmond. The war over, 
he cruised to the South Seas, in the sloop-of-war Tuscarora, 
one of the ships in Commodore John Rodgers^ fleet, which 
conveyed the monitor Monadnock from Hampton Roads to 
San Francisco. At the termination of this cruise to the 



mm 





HON. DANIEL R. MAGRUDER, B. A. '53, M.A. 

Ex-Associate Judge of Maryland Circuit. 

Trustee of St. John's College. 



PHILIP R. VOORHEES, B. A. '55, M.A. 

Ex-Lieutenant U. S. Navy and 

Attorney-at-Law. 





REV. JOHN POYSAL HYDE, B. A. '57, D. D., LL, D. 

President of the Valley Female College, 

Winchester, Va. 



WM. HERSEY HOPKINS, B. A. '59, M. A., Ph. D. 

Prof, of Greek and Latin at the Woman's College, 

Baltimore, Md. 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 85 

Pacific, he was ordered to the Naval Academy at Annapolis, 
as Assistant Instructor in Steam Engineering. He resigned 
his commission as First Assistant Engineer in the Navy in 
February, 1868, reviewed his law studies, and was admitted 
to the Maryland bar, and later to the bar of the Supreme 
Court of the United States. After a short service in the 
Examining Department of the Patent Office, he commenced 
the practice of patent law in Washington, D. C. In 1874 he 
married, in Boston, Sarah Marston Tuttle, daughter of Com- 
modore Henry Bruce, retired, an officer of the war of 181 2, 
and now the oldest officer in the navy. He came to New 
York city in January, 1878, and making the practice of 
patent law a specialty, soon attained a large and remunera- 
tive practice. 

Mr. Voorhees is the author of several historical writings, 
and at the centennial celebration of St. John's College in 
1889, delivered an address on the history of the college from 
its earliest beginning. He is a member, in New York, of 
the University Club, the Lawyers' Club, the Engineers' 
Club, and a member of the Military Order of the Loyal 
Legion of the United States; and belongs, among other 
scientific societies, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, N. 
Y. Geographical Society, N. Y. Genealogical and Biographi- 
cal Society, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and 
to the American Society of Naval Engineers. 

THE REV. JOHN P. HYDE, D. D., LL. D. 

Class '57. 
Rev. John Poisal Hyde, A. M., D. D., LL. D., was born in 
Annapolis, Md., Jan. 31, 1836. His ancestors on his father's 
side for several generations were prominently and honorably 
associated with the various business interests of that city. 
His mother, Jane Bruce Hyde (nfee Phelps), was noted for 
her accomplishments and intellectual endowments. Dr. Hyde 
received his preliminary education in the best private schools 
of the city, entered the famous old St. John's College, then 
presided over by the Rev. Dr. Humphreys, one of the most 



86 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

successful educators of his period, and after several years of 
close and persistent study, was graduated with the highest 
distinction, and on commencement day had the honor of 
being selected to deliver the valedictory address; and his 
effort on that occasion entranced the audience and is yet 
vividly remembered by many who heard it. 

After graduation, Dr. Hyde selected medicine as his pro- 
fession, and became a student in the office of Dr. John 
Ridout, where he pursued his studies with such assiduity that 
his health became imperiled, and respite from study and 
change of climate were imperatively ordered. So it happened 
that he was led to the historic Shenandoah Valley in Vir- 
ginia, where his first public service was as principal of the 
Front Royal Academy. Whilst thus engaged, following his 
natural bent, he diligently pursued a theological course of 
study, and finally entered the Baltimore Conference of the 
M. E. Church South, in. which he received his first regular 
appointment in i860 at the hands of Bishop Simpson, who 
sent him to Moorefield, W. Va, A year earlier, however, he 
had been in charge of the work at Woodstock, Va., and 
vicinity, with marked success. 

Then the war came, and his military training at old St. 
John's enabled him to be of immediate service to his adopted 
State, whose cause he espoused with all the heartiness of his 
ardent nature, in the organization and drilling of the undis- 
ciplined material which rapidly rallied under its banners. 
Having the " courage of his convictions," he went into active 
service, was severely wounded, and fought gallantly through- 
out the war. And when he now occasionally appears, on 
gala days, at the head of the Second Virginia Regiment, of 
which he is chaplain, he is recognized and cheered by hun- 
dreds of his old comrades of the " times which tried men's 
souls," as the " fighting chaplain " — a soubriquet which he 
won by conspicuous gallantry on many bloody fields. 

After the war he served a number of congregations with 
great success, until called to the educational work of the 
church, for which he is eminently fitted, and in which he has 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 87 

been no less successful than in the pulpit. Previous to being 
called to the Valley Female College, Dr. Hyde was in charge 
of Sonoah College at Martinsburg, W. Va., and that institu- 
tion prospered under his administration. He is at present 
President of the Valley Female College at Winchester, Va., 
one of the most important schools under the auspices of the 
M. E. Church South. His ability in this position has at- 
tracted widespread attention, and his reputation is not con- 
fined to the limits of the State of Virginia, in which the high 
position of State Superintendent of Education has been ten- 
dered him ; and even now his friends are presenting his name, 
with the most encouraging prospect of success, as a candi- 
date for the office of Commissioner of Education for the 
United States. 

As a minister, soldier, and educator he has excelled. As 
a citizen his standing is that which might be expected of a 
man of his high character — modest and unostentatious, pur- 
suing the even tenor of his way without an effort or desire to 
attract public attention, and thoroughly absorbed in his work 
as a teacher, he nevertheless has frequently to refuse honors 
which a less selfish man would eagerly grasp. He does, how- 
ever, fill the position of High Priest of John Dove Chapter 
of Royal Arch Masons, Chaplain of Hiram Lodge A. F. and 
A. M., Chaplain of Turner Ashby Camp of Confederate Vet- 
erans (one of the largest and most important organizations of 
the kind in the State), and Chaplain of the Second Regiment 
of Virginia Volunteers. Should he be tendered the high 
office for which his friends are now urging him, thousands 
who know him throughout the United States will vouch that 
he will fill it not only with the ability for which he is dis- 
tinguished, but with conscientious devotion to the interests 
committed to his charge. 

The Rev. Dr. Hyde received the Doctorate of Divinity 
from the University of Virginia in 1889, and in 1891 the 
Doctorate of Law^s from his Alma Mater, St. John's, at An- 
napolis. 



88 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

HON. SOMERVILLE PINKNEY TUCK, M. A., LL. D. 

Class '62. 

Maryland, though numbered among the smallest States, 
has a long roll of families whose members delight in work- 
ing for and winning renown generation after generation. 
Mr. Tuck is one of them. Hon. William Tuck was born and 
died at Annapolis, Md. He was speaker and many times 
member of the Maryland House, State Senator, and finally 
Judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals. He married Mar- 
garet Sprigg Bowie, daughter of Philemon Lloyd Chew, and 
granddaughter of Major Benjamin Brookes of the 3d Mary- 
land in the Revolutionary Army. 

Mr. S. P. Tuck, their son, was bom Sept. 24th, 1848, at 
Annapolis; educated at St. John's College there and at the 
University of Virginia, '69. In college, he was a member 
of the JefYerson Literary and the Kappa Phi Lambda secret 
rocieties. He is Vice-President of the St. John's Alumni^ 
and one of the Executive Committee of the University of 
Virginia Alumni. He studied law in his father's office, was 
admitted to practice in the Maryland Appellate Court in 
1871, and in the N. Y. Supreme Court in 1872; entered the 
office of Gray & Davenport (the former now Judge of N. Y. 
Court of Appeals); from 1873 to 1879 was one of the attor- 
neys for the receiver of the Memphis, El Paso & Pacific 
Railroad Company, and Managing Director and counsel of 
the Franco-Texan Land Company, which caused long resi- 
dence both in Paris and Texas. 

From 1882-85 Mr. Tnzk was an Alabama Claims Com- 
missioner, and in the latter year was appointed by Secretary 
of State Bayard a special agent to ferret out evidence in Eng- 
land, France, Spain, Belgium, and the West Indies in rela- 
tion to the French Spoliation Claims. He secured evidence 
of the capture and condemnation of over 1500 vessels; his 
reports were printed by order of Congress, and for these 
services St. John's gave him the honorary degree of A. M. 
Mr. Tuck's public services did not end here. 

In 1888 President Cleveland, with the Senate's consent,. 





-»», 



SAMUEL GARNER, B. A. '71, Ph. D. 
Professor at U. S. Naval Academy. 



HON. JOHN S. WIRT, B. A. '72, M. A. 
Trustee of St. John's College and Senator of Md, 





DR. JAMES D. IGLEHART, B. A. -72, M. A., M. D. 



RT. REV. C. KINLOCH NELSON, B. A. 
Bishop of Georgia. 



'72, D. D. 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 89 

appointed him Assistant Commissioner-General to the Paris 
Exposition, and he spent eighteen months in the work. 

He was a member of the International Jury for Social 
Economy, Vice-President of the Jury of Group II (Educa- 
tion, Instruction and Liberal Arts), and a member of the Su- 
perior Jury of 80, and of the sub-commission of 25 who 
revised the 30,000 awards of the Exposition. For his ser- 
vices he was made an officer of the Legion of Honor at the 
close of the Exposition. He is a member of the Maryland 
branch of the celebrated hereditary Society of the Cincinnati. 
Mr. Tuck is now acting in an advisory capacity to the Exec- 
utive Committee on Awards of the World's Columbian Expo- 
sition. An uncompromising democrat, he is a member of 
the Metropolitan Club of Washington, the University Club 
of New York, and of the Richmond County Country Club 
of Staten Island, where he resides, with his law office in New 
York. Pie was appointed February, 1894, Judge of the Inter- 
national Court, Alexandria, Egypt, and received from his 
Alma Mater the degree of LL. D. the same year. 

THE RT. REV. CLELAND KINLOCH NELSON, D. D. 

Class '72. 
Third Bishop of Georgia, was bom near Cobham, Albe- 
marle county, Virginia, May 27,, 1852. His great-grand- 
father. General Thomas Nelson, was Governor of Virginia, 
and is remembered by posterity by the group on the pedestal 
of the statue of Washington, at Richmond, of whom General 
Nelson is one. The Bishop is a graduate of St. John's Col- 
lege, Annapolis, ivlaryland, and received his theological in- 
struction partly from his uncle, the Rev. C. K. Nelson, D. D., 
and partly from the Berkeley Divinity School, at Middle- 
town, Connecticut. Was ordained to the diaconate by 
Bishop Pinkney, of Maryland, on September 19, 1875, in the 
Church of the Ascension, Washington, D. C, and to the 
priesthood in Holy Trinity Church, Philadelphia, Pa., on the 
22d day of June, 1876, by Bishop W. B. Stevens, of Pennsyl- 
vania. He was rector of the Church of St. John the Baptist, 
Germantown, Pa., from 1876 to 1882, and of the Church of 



I 



90 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 



the Nativity, South Bethlehem, Central Pennsylvania, from 
1882 until his election to the episcopate, and was also an ex- 
amining chaplain in that diocese. Received his degree of 
D. D. from St. John's College, 1889, and from the University 
of the South in 1892. He was elected Bishop of Georgia at 
a special election held in Christ Church, Macon, November 
12, 1 89 1, and was consecrated in St. Luke's Cathedral, At- 
lanta, on St. Matthias' Day, February 24, 1892, by Bishops 
Quintard (Tennessee), Howe (South Carolina), Lyman (North 
Carolina), Whitehead (Pittsburgh), Rulison (Assistant of 
Central Pennsylvania), Coleman (Delaware), and Jackson 
(Assistant of Alabama). The sermon was preached by 
Bishop Rulison. Bishop Nelson's entry upon the episcopate 
has been marked by great spiritual blessings upon the Dio- 
cese of Georgia. 

HON. JOHN S. WIRT, B. A., M. A. 

Class '72. 

Coming from a family of which many generations on both 
sides have been Cecil county, Maryland, people, Mr. John 
W. Wirt was born on Bohemia Manor, not far from Elkton, 
Md., and married Miss Margaret S. Biddle. TTheir son, the 
Hon. John S. Wirt, was bom also in Cecil county, on Nov. 
1 6th, 1 85 1, received his preparatory training at the Elkton 
Academy, and entered St. John's, Annapolis, where he was 
graduated in the class of 1872, with the degree of A. B., 
receiving in 1889, from his Alma Mater, the degree of M. A. 
First honor man in his class at St. John's, it was not unnatural 
that when he was graduated at the Law School of the Uni- 
versity of Maryland in 1874, with the degree of LL. B., he 
should rank second in his class. 

Devoting himself to his profession, Mr. Wirt soon ac- 
quired a lucrative practice and such standing in his commu- 
nity that in 1889 he was elected to the State Senate of Mary- 
land, of which he is still a- member. 

While always recognized as an active party man, his inde- 
pendence on questions of legislation has brought him many 
friends, not members of his own party. Whether in office 



/ 



'-""•^^i^- 





HON. SOMERVILLE P. TUCK, LL. B. '62, M, A., LL. D. 

U. S. Com'rto Paris, French Spoliation Claims. 

Judge of Internationa! Court, Egypt. 



BLANCHARD RANDALL, B. A. '74. 
Trustee of St. John's College. 




DR. T. BARTON BRUNE, B. A. '75, M. A., M. D. 
Trustee of St. John's College. 



GEO. A. HARTER, B. A. '78, M. A., Ph. D. 
Professor of Mathematics in Delaware College. 






ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 91 

or out of office his name has always been associated with the 
higher elements of his party and with all that would tend 
towards reforming existing abuses. It was largely due to 
his efforts that the Australian Ballot Law went into effect in 
Maryland. 

Always a Democrat, he was a member of the Maryland 
delegation to the National Democratic Convention, both in 
1884 and 1892, and supported President Cleveland, for whom 
he entertained, and still entertains, feelings of loyalty and 
admiration. 

Mr. Wirt has delivered many addresses of a literary char- 
acter, among which perhaps the best known is an address 
given before the Alumni of St. John's College, in 1890, on 
the subject of "The Relation of Men of Liberal Education 
to the Civil Service Reform Movement." This address was 
largely circulated both in the daily press and pamphlet form. 
A review, consisting of ten articles in the Baltimore Sun for 
1890, has also been much commented upon. 

Mr. Wirt's position in the community is best shown by the 
fact that he is a trustee of his Alma Mater, St. John's College, 
Vice-President of the Civil Service Association of Maryland, 
and is connected with other organizations of a local character. 

As a jurist, Mr. Wirt ranks among the foremost in his 
State, and his opinions are eagerly sought and profoundly 
respected. 

THOMAS BARTON BRUNE, B.A., M.A., M. D. 

Class '75. 
Thomas Barton Brune, M. D., was born in Baltimore in 
1856, and died in his native city in 1891. He was the second 
son of Frederick William and Emily Stone Barton Brune. 
After preparation by his uncle, the Rev. William Tilghman 
Johnstone, he entered the Pen-Lucy School of Col. Richard 
Malcolm Johnson at Waverly, near the city limits, at that 
time a flourishing institution, where for several years he was 
the favorite pupil of his masters, who took special pains in 
preparing him for college. He entered St. John's College in 



92 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

1872 as a sophomore, and graduated in 1875, dividing the 
first honors of his class, and two years later took his degree 
of Master of Arts, after special study and the preparation of 
a thesis. He soon began the study of medicine under the 
direction of Dr. Frank Donaldson, one of the leading prac- 
titioners of Baltimore, at the same time attending lectures at 
the Maryland University, where he graduated, and at once 
went to Europe to perfect himself in the schools and hospi- 
tals of Berlin and Vienna. He remained abroad twelve 
months, and returned to take the position of resident phy- 
sician at the University Hospital, an important position for 
one so young. With a year of hospital life, he commenced 
the practice of his profession, promptly showing himself to 
be a most skillful practitioner and a man most thoroughly 
earnest not only in the pursuit of doing good, but working in 
the purely scientific branches of his profession. He made a 
special study of urinary analyses, and in the course of his in- 
vestigations translated Hoffman and Ultzman's new book on 
this subject, which in connection with Dr. W. Holbrooke 
Curtis, of New York, he published. It has passed through 
three editions, and proves to be a standard text-book on the 
subject in medical schools. He did not write much, as his 
private practice grew fast, but many articles, especially in the 
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, are from his pen. He 
was early elected into the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty 
of the State of Maryland, and, as chairman of more than two 
of its committees, was well known as an earnest worker and 
thoroughly capable man. He also served the Society for a 
time as corresponding secretary. He was at the time of his 
death one of the visiting physicians at St. Joseph's Hospital ; 
also physician to the Maryland School for the Blind, lecturer 
on clinical medicine at the University of Maryland, and pro- 
fessor of the practice of medicine in the Baltimore Polyclinic. 
Few boys of his day made such a record for themselves as 
Barton Brune, whether it was at lessons or play. His de- 
votion to athletics was a feature of his whole life, which 
brought with it great success in all sports, and he continued 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 93 

to be an ardent enthusiast and advocate of all such exercises. 
His whole forceful entrgy seemed to be thrown into every 
act of his life. Indeed, it might be said of him that this char- 
acteristic was the predominant one of his nature; an intense 
desire to excel. With years, this desire became second 
nature, and, with experience, it begat the closest attention 
and most thorough study, so that the boy who would study 
out and watch with the greatest care every point of a game 
grew to consider and weigh every item of his lectures, and, in 
time, to diagnosticate with the utmost certainty the charac- 
teristics of disease and health. While he learned easily to 
take the front rank among scholars and athletes, he was pre- 
paring his mind and hands to be most self-reliant, and to be 
the reliance of others, until at last hundreds realized their loss 
in the death of their beloved physician. With only twelve 
years of practice in his profession, and that in the midst of a 
large, bustling city, Dr. Brune left behind him a name most 
honored and respected in his profession and an unusually 
large clientel. Dr. Brune was an earnest Churchman, and 
for many years one of the wardens of St. Michael and All 
Angels Protestant Episcopal Church of Baltimore city, of 
which his father was one of the founders and original vestry. 
He was elected to the Board of Governors of St. John's Col- 
lege in 1882, among the first of the younger graduates or 
those who belonged to classes graduated since the war. His 
alma mater was to him one of the most interesting and pre- 
cious things of his life and a constant source of care and 
thought on his part. The last writing he did was the prepa- 
ration within its halls of a paper to be submitted to the 
Board of Trustees. As a member of the Board, he was most 
conscientious and untiring in his devotion to the interests of 
the college. He married in 1879 Agnes Wirt, (daughter of 
the Hon. Alexander Randall, of Annapolis), who with two 
daughters survived him. 



94 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

HERBERT HARLAN, B.A., M.A., M. D. 

Class '77. 

Of distinguished ancestry, David Harlan, Medical Director 
of the United States Navy, left four sons, the two eldest 
graduates of St. John's College, at Annapolis, and all men of 
force and character, — men who, though young in years, have 
already achieved pre-eminence in the community in which 
they are best known: Judge Henry D. Harlan, Dr. Herbert 
Harlan, W. Beatty Harlan, graduate of Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity, lawyer, and David E. Harlan, graduate of Princeton, 
civil engineer. 

Born at Churchville, Harford county, Md., May 7th, 
1856, Dr. Herbert Harlan was prepared for college at St. 
Clement's Hall, Ellicott City, Md.; was duly graduated at 
St. John's in 1877, with the degree of A. B., taking in 1887 
the degree of A. M. While an undergraduate. Dr. Harlan, 
noted for his social popularity, was also much interested in 
athletics, playing first base on the St. John's nine in 1876 and 
1877, and rowing the bow oar in the college shell during the 
year of his graduation. 

Pursuing the full medical course at the University of Mary- 
land, he took the degree of M. D. in 1879, and began the 
practice of his profession in Baltimore. 

Immediately after graduation, Dr. Harlan pursued his 
medical studies in Paris and Vienna, returning home in 1880. 
He was Chief of CHnic to the Chair of Nervous Diseases at 
the University of Maryland from 1880 to 1882, serving as 
Assistant Demonstrator of Anatomy from 1880 to 1886, and 
as Demonstrator of Anatomy from 1886 to 1891 in the same 
institution, and is now the Professor of Ophthalmology and 
Otology in the Baltimore University. 

He has confined himself of late years principally to the 
diseases of the eye and ear, and, in addition to attending to 
the duties of his professorship, is surgeon to the Presbyterian 
Eye and Ear Hospital in Baltimore. 

He is a member of the American Medical Association, 
Baltimore Academy of Medicine, of the Clinical Society of 






DR. HERBERT HARLAN, B. A. '77, M. A., M. D. 
Professor in the Baltimore University. 



HON. HENRY D. HARLAN, B. A. '78, M. A., LL. D. 
Chief Judge of the Supreme Court, Baltimore, Md. 





DR. JOSEPH N. HENRY, '82, M. D- 
Lecturer at Bellevue College. 



NICHOLAS BREWER, Jr., Class '82. 
Architect. 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 95 

Memphis, of the Baltimore Medical Association, of the Medi- 
cal and Surgical Society, Maryland Journal Club, and of the 
Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland. 
. Despite the many duties devolved upon him, Dr. Harlan is 
the author of frequent contributions to various medical jour- 
nals, and is a member of the University and other clubs of 
Baltimore. 

JOSEPH NICHOLSON HENRY, M.D. 

Class '82. 

Grand-nephew of the late James Buchanan on his father's 
side, Dr. Henry on his mother's side is descended from Sir 
Francis Nicholson, Colonial Governor of Maryland and Vir- 
ginia. His great-grandfather Nicholson, a member of the 
House of Representatives, gave the deciding vote which 
elected Thomas Jefferson to the Presidency of the United 
States. 

Dr. Henry was born at Annapolis, Md., July 8th, i860, 
was prepared for college at the Charlier Institute, N. Y. 
city, and entered St. John's College, Annapolis, Md., with the 
class of 1882. Pursuing the course of medicine in the Uni- 
versity of Vermont, he took the degree of M. D., and began 
the practice of his profession. 

Having studied in various hospitals, Dr. Henry was for- 
tunate enough to secure an appointment as surgeon on 
board of the best ships of the Pacific Mail Steamship Co., 
and thus became familiar with a class of people and acquired 
an experience rather unusual to a man of eastern training, as 
he visited China, Japan, Sandwich Islands, Samoans, Fijis, 
New Zealand, Australia, and the Central and South Ameri- 
can Republics. 

Despite his varied experience, Dr. Henry has found suffi- 
cient time to write occasionally medical articles, has a lucra- 
tive practice in New York, and is a member of the West End 
Medical Society, of the N. Y. Southern Society, and of the 
New York County Medical Association. 

He is the Assistant to the Chair of Dermatology at Belle- 



96 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

vue College, and is the Lecturer on Dermatology and Sy- 
philology during the spring term of the college, and is very 
popular with his patients and students, not alone from his 
skill as a physician, nor from the geniality of his manner, but 
by reason of a delightful personality. 

Dr. Henry married, in 1890, a daughter of Rev. Dr. 
Thomas A. Hoyt, who was at one time President of the New 
York Gold Board, and whose grandfather was a Colonel 
under Washington during the Revolutionary War. Mrs. 
Henry is a representative, on her mother's side, of the old 
South Carolina family of Elleson, and the Harrison family 
of Virginia. 

ALEXANDER LACY EWING. 

Class '92. 
Alexander Lacy Ewing, son of Dr. William A. Ewing, of 
New York, died at the University of Virginia, February 2d, 
1893, in the twenty-first year of his age, under circumstances 
of peculiar sadness. Mr. Ewing was graduated from St. 
John's College, Annapolis, receiving the degree of A. B. in 
June, 1892. He was taking his first course in medicine at 
the University of Virginia when he had an attack of appen- 
dicitis, which, notwithstanding the assiduous care of the 
medical faculty, rapidly proved fatal. Thus was brought to 
an untimely close a life that promised much, not only to his 
relatives and friends, but to the world and to his Alma Mater. 



ssbam 





ELON S. HOBBS, B. A. '82, M. A. 
Attorney-at-Law. 



HERBERT NOBLE, B. A. '89, LL. B. 
Attorney-at-Law. 





M. TILGHMAN JOHNSTON, B. A. '90. 
Attorney-at-Law. 



HON. OSBORNE I. YELLOTT. B. A. '91, LL. B. 
Attorney-at-Law. 



BiifiBi 



CHARTER 



OF 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 

ANNAPOLIS, MD. 

GRANTKD 1784 



CHARTER OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, 
ANNAPOLIS, MD., 1784. 

Whereas, institutions for the liberal education of youth in 
the principles of virtue, knowledge and useful literature are 
of the highest benefit to society, in order to train up and per- 
petuate a succession of able and honest men for discharging 
the various offices and duties of life, both civil and religious, 
with usefulness and reputation, and such institutions of learn- 
ing have accordingly been promoted and encouraged by the 
wisest and best regulated States: And whereas, it appears 
to this General Assembly that many public-spirited indi- 
viduals, from an earnest desire to promote the founding a 
college or seminary of learning on the Western Shore of this 
State, have subscribed and procured subscriptions to a con- 
siderable amount, and there is reason to believe that very 
large additions will be obtained to the same throughout the 
different counties of the said Shore, if they were made capa- 
ble in law to receive and apply the same towards founding 
and carrying on a college or general seminary of learning, 
with such salutar}' plan, and with such legislative assistance 
and direction as the General Assembly might think fit; and 
this General Assembly, highly approving those generous 
exertions of individuals, are desirous to embrace the present 
favorable occasion of peace and prosperity, for making last- 
ing provision for the encouragement and advancement of all 
useful knowledge and literature through every part of this 
State : 

IL Be it enacted, by the General Assembly of Maryland, 
That a college or general seminary of learning, by the name 
of Saint John's, be established on the said Western Shore, 
upon the following fundamental and inviolable principles, 
namely : first, the said college shall be founded and maintained 



100 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

forever, upon a most liberal plan, for the benefit of youth of 
every religious denomination, who shall be freely admitted 
to equal privileges and advantages of education, and to all 
the literary honors of the college, according to their merit, 
without requiring or enforcing any religious or civil test, or 
urging their attendance upon any particular religious wor- 
ship or service, other than what they have been educated in, 
or have the consent and approbation of their parents or guar- 
dians to attend; nor shall any preference be given in the 
choice of a principal, vice-principal, or other professor, master 
or tutor, in the said college, on account of his particular re- 
ligious profession, having regard solely to his moral char- 
acter and literary abilities, and other necessary qualifications 
to fill the place for which he shall be chosen. Secondly, 
there shall be a subscription carried on in the different coun- 
ties of the Western Shore, upon the plan on which it hath 
been opened, for founding the said college; and the several 
subscribers shall class themselves according to their respec- 
tive inclinations, and for every thousand pounds current 
money which may be subscribed and paid, or secured to be 
paid, into the hands of the treasurer of the Western Shore, by 
any particular class of subscribers, they shall be entitled to 
the choice of one person as a visitor and governor of said 
college. Thirdly, when any of the first visitors and govern- 
ors chosen by the subscribers as aforesaid shall die, or re- 
move out of the State, or absent himself from four succeed- 
ing quarterly meetings, without such excuse or plea of neces- 
sary absence as shall be deemed reasonable by a legal and 
just quorum of the said visitors and governors, duly assem- 
bled at a quarterly visitation of the said college, such quorum, 
so assembled, shall proceed, by a new election, to fill up the 
place and seat of such deceased, removed, or absenting 
member. 

III. And be it further enacted, That the Reverend Mr. 
John Carroll, and the Reverend William Smith, and Patrick 
Allison, doctors in divinity; Richard Spri gg, John Steret, and 
George Digges, Esquires, and such other persons as they, or 
any two of them, may appoint in the different counties of this 



^^fei 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 101 

Shore, be agents for soliciting and receiving, and they are 
hereby authorized to soHcit and receive subscriptions and con- 
tributions for the said intended college and seminary of uni- 
versal learning, of any person or persons, bodies politic and 
corporate, who may be willing to promote so good a de- 
sign; and when any class or classes of subscribers shall have 
subscribed and paid, or secured to be paid, as aforesaid, to 
the treasurer of the Western Shore, in three equal yearly 
payments, to commence from the first day of June, seventeen 
hundred and eighty-five, the sum of one thousand pounds 
current money, and shall have lodged their original subscrip- 
tion papers in the hands of any one of the agents aforesaid, 
such agents shall take a copy of the same, and shall deposit 
the original subscription lists with the said treasurer, taking 
his receipt for the same; and such agent shall then appoint a 
time and place, convenient for the said class of subscribers 
to meet and choose one person as a visitor and governor of 
the college, agreeably to the foregoing fundamental articles, 
and shall cause six weeks' notice of the time and place of 
such election to be given in the Annapolis and Baltimore 
newspapers, and shall attend at the time and place of such 
election, with a complete list of the subscribers, and all per- 
sons having subscribed or contributed nine pounds or up- 
wards shall be entitled to vote for one person as a visitor and 
governor, according as he may be classed, but shall not be 
entitled to vote for another visitor and governor among any 
other class or denomination of subscribers, unless he shall 
have made a second subscription of nine pounds or up- 
wards in the second class, by and with their approbation; 
and all persons who may be chosen visitors and governors as 
aforesaid shall be considered as agents, together with the 
agents above mentioned, and shall have authority to act in 
conjunction with them, or any of them, in carrying the de- 
sign into execution, as fully as if they had been herein and 
hereby nominated and appointed original agents for that pur- 
pose. 

IV. And be it enacted. That when thirteen visitors and 



102 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

governors shall be chosen as aforesaid, the said agents, or 
any three or more of them, shall cause six weeks' notice to 
be given in the newspapers aforesaid, appointing a time and 
place for the said visitors and governors to meet and take 
upon them the discharge of their trust; and the said thirteen 
visitors and governors, and such persons as may be after- 
wards added to their number by any new elections made as 
aforesaid, by subscribers of one thousand pounds current 
money, within three years after the first day of June, one 
thousand seven hundred and eighty-five, and their successors, 
duly chosen according to the tenor hereof, shall be, and are 
hereby declared to be, one community, corporation and body 
politic, to have continuance forever, by the name of "The 
visitors and governors of Saint John's College, in the State of 
Maryland " ; and by the same name they shall have perpetual 
succession. Provided, nevertheless, that the whole number 
of visitors and governors of the said college shall never at 
any time be more than twenty-four, nor less than thirteen, 
seven of whom shall always have their usual residence within 
sixteen miles of the said college; and provided, further, that 
if in three years from the first day of June, one thousand 
seven hundred and eighty-five, there shall not be twenty-four 
visitors and governors chosen as aforesaid by classes of sub- 
scribers of one thousand pounds current money each class, 
the other visitors and governors, being not less than eleven, 
duly assembled at any quarterly visitation, to be held accord- 
ing to the tenor of this act, shall proceed by election to fill up 
the number of twenty-four visitors and governors, as they 
shall think most expedient and convenient. Provided, al- 
ways, that seventeen of the said visitors and governors shall 
be resident on the Western Shore of this State, but that the 
additional visitors and governors (to make up and perpetuate 
the number of twenty-four) may be chosen from any part of 
this State, if they are such persons as can reasonably under- 
take to attend the quarterly visitations, and are thought ca- 
pable, by their particular learning, weight and character, to 
advance the interests and reputation of the said seminary. 



ST, JOHN'S COLLEGE. 103 

V. And be it enacted, That the said thirteen or more visi- 
tors and governors shall have full power and authority to 
call for and receive, out of the hands of the treasurer of the 
Western Shore, all such subscription papers and moneys as 
may have been deposited with him, or may in anywise have 
come into his hands and keeping, for the founding and carry- 
ing on the said college, and to appoint their own treasurer, 
who shall give sufficient security for the faithful discharge of 
his trust, and shall thereafter have the care and custody of 
all subscription papers, and sum or sums of money that may 
be collected thereon, and the receiving and keeping of all 
outstanding subscriptions, and other moneys that may be put 
into his hands, for the use of the said college, subject to the 
order of the visitors and governors of the same. 

VI. And be it enacted. That the said thirteen or more 
visitors and governors shall, at their first meeting after the 
first day of June next, and before the first day of August, if 
so many visitors and governors should then be chosen ac- 
cording to the tenor of this act, fix and determine upon some 
proper place or situation on the said Western Shore for erect- 
ing the said college, which determination shall be by a ma- 
jority of the whole number of visitors and governors so met, 
such number being in the whole not less than thirteen ; and if 
such majority shall not, within the time aforesaid, agree upon 
any one place or situation for the said college, it shall be left 
for the General Assembly of this State, at their first ensuing 
session, to determine upon the place for building the said 
college, upon the application of any three or more of the said 
visitors and governors, setting forth that they could not agree 
upon the premises. And a complete list of the subscriptions 
for founding the said college shall, at the same time, be laid 
before the General Assembly. But if, on or before the first 
day of June, seventeen hundred and eighty-five, there should 
not be a sufficient number of subscribers for electing and 
completing the whole of the said thirteen visitors and gov- 
ernors as aforesaid, the number of visitors and governors 
that shall be chosen on or before the said first day of June, if 



104 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

they are seven or more, may fix and determine upon the 
place for erecting the said college, provided seven of them 
shall agree upon any one place, and if they cannot so agree, 
they may either leave the same to the determination of the 
General Assembly as aforesaid, or they may call to their 
advice the six agents above named; and any four of the 
said agents that can attend, with the seven or more visitors 
and governors so chosen, may either together, by seven 
on the whole agreeing, fix and determine upon the place 
" for building the said college, as they shall judge most 
convenient and satisfactory to the majority of subscribers, 
and best calculated to secure the success of the design, or if 
they cannot so agree, the determination of the place shall be 
still left to the General Assembly, at their first session ensuing 
the said first day of June next. In the meantime, the said 
agents, and the visitors and governors so chosen, shall use 
all diligence to increase the number of subscriptions. 

VII. And be it enacted. That if the city of Annapolis should 
be fixed upon as a proper place for establishing the said in- 
tended college, this General Assembly give and grant, and 
upon that condition do hereby give and grant, to the visitors 
and governors of the said college, by the name of " The 
visitors and governors of Saint John's College, in the State of 
Maryland," and their successors, all that four acres within 
the city of Annapolis, purchased for the use of the public, and 
conveyed on the second day of October, seventeen hundred 
and forty-four, by Stephen Bordley, Esquire, to Thomas 
Bladen, Esquire, then Governor, to have and to hold the said 
four acres of land, with the appurtenances, to the said visitors 
and governors, and their successors, for the only use, benefit 
and behoof, of the said college and seminary of universal 
learning forever. 

VIII. And be it enacted, That the said visitors and gov- 
ernors, and their successors, by the same name, shall be able 
and capable in law to purchase, have and enjoy, to them and 
their successors, in fee, or for any other less estate or estates, 
any lands, tenements, rents, annuities, pensions, or other 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 105 

hereditaments, within this State, by the gift, grant, bargain, 
sale, ahenation, enfeofment, release, confirmation or devise, of 
any person or persons, bodies politic or corporate, capable to 
make the same; and such lands, tenements, rents, annuities, 
pensions, or other hereditaments, or any less estates, rights or 
interests, of or in the same (excepting the said public lands 
hereby granted), at their pleasure to grant, alien, sell and 
transfer, in such manner and form as they shall think meet 
and convenient for the furtherance of the said college; and 
also that they may take and receive any sum or sums of 
money, and any kind, manner or portion, of goods and chat- 
tels, that shall be given, sold or bequeathed, to them, by any 
person or persons, bodies politic or corporate, capable to 
make a gift, sale or bequest thereof, and employ the same 
towards erecting, setting up and maintaining the said col- 
lege, in such manner as they shall judge most necessary and 
convenient for the instruction, improvement and education, 
of youth, in the vernacular and learned languages, and gen- 
erally in any kind of literature, arts and sciences, which they 
shall think proper to be taught for training up good, useful 
and accomplished men, for the service of their country in 
Church and State. 

IX. And be it enacted. That the said visitors and govern- 
ors, and their successors, by the name aforesaid, shall be 
able in law to sue and be sued, plead and be impleaded, in 
any court or courts, before any judge, judges or justices, 
within this State and elsewhere, in all and all manner of suits, 
complaints, pleas, causes, matters and demands, of whatso- 
ever kind, nature or form they be, and all and every- other 
matter and thing therein to do, in as full and effectual a man- 
ner as any other person or persons, bodies politic or corpor- 
ate, within this State, or any of the United States of America, 
in like cases may or can do. 

X. And be it enacted. That the said visitors and governors, 
and their successors, shall have full power and authority to 
have, make and use, one common and public seal, and like- 
wise one privy seal, with such devices and inscriptions as 



106 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

they shall think proper, and to ascertain, fix and regulate the 
uses of both seals, by their own laws, and the same seals, or 
either of them, to change, break, alter and renew, at their 
pleasure. 

XI. And be it enacted. That the said visitors and govern- 
ors, and their successors, from time to time, and at all times 
hereafter forever, shall have full power and authority to con- 
stitute and appoint, in such manner as they shall think best 
and most convenient, a principal and vice-principal of the said 
college, and professors, with proper tutors and assistants, for 
instructing the students and scholars of the said seminary in 
all the liberal arts and sciences, and in the ancient and mod- 
em tongues and languages, who shall be severally styled 
professors of such arts, sciences, languages or tongues, as 
they shall be nominated and appointed for, according to 
each particular nomination and appointment; and the said 
principal, vice-principal and professors, so constituted and 
appointed, from time to time, shall be known and distin- 
guished forever as one learned body or faculty, by the name 
of " The principal, vice-principal and professors oif Saint 
John's College, in the State of Maryland " ; and by that name 
shall be capable of exercising such powers and authorities as 
the visitors and governors of the said college, and their suc- 
cessors, shall, by their ordinances, think necessary to dele- 
gate to them, for the instruction, discipline and government, 
of the said seminary, and of all the students, scholars, minis- 
ters and servants, belonging to the same; and the said prin- 
cipal and vice-principal, professors, students, scholars, and 
such necessary ministers and servants as give constant at- 
tendance upon the business of the college, shall be exempted 
from all rates and taxes on their salaries, and from all mili- 
tary duties, except in the case of an actual invasion of the 
State, and when general military law is declared. 

XII. And be it enacted, That the clear yearly value of the 
messuages, houses, lands, tenements, rents, annuities or other 
hereditaments and real estate of the said college and corpora- 
tion, shall not exceed nine thousand pounds current money. 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 107 

to be reckoned in Spanish milled dollars, at the present rate 
and weight; and all gifts, grants and bequests, to the said col- 
lege and corporation, after the yearly value of their estates 
shall amount to nine thousand pounds as aforesaid, and all 
bargains and purchases to be made by the said corporation, 
which may increase tlie yearly value of said estate above or 
beyond the sum aforesaid, shall be absolutely void and of 
none eflfect. 

XIII. And be it enacted, That the said visitors and gov- 
ernors, and their successors, shall meet at least four times in 
every year, in stated quarterly meetings, to be appointed by 
their own ordinances, and at such other times as by their 
said ordinances they may direct, in order to examine the pro- 
gress of the students and scholars in literature, to hear and 
determine on all complaints and appeals, and upon all matters 
touching the discipline of the seminary, and the good and 
wholesome execution of their ordinances; in all which ex- 
aminations, meetings and determinations, such number of the 
said visitors and governors duly met (provided they be not 
less than seven) shall be a quorum, as the fundamental ordi- 
nances at first, or any time afterwards, duly enacted by a ma- 
jority of the whole visitors, shall fix and determine. 

XIV. And be it enacted. That a majority of the said visi- 
tors and governors for the time being, when duly assembled 
at any quarterly or other meeting, upon due notice given to 
the whole body of visitors and governors, shall have full 
power and authority to make fundamental ordinances for the 
government of the said college, and the instruction of the 
youth, as aforesaid, and by these ordinances to appoint such 
a number of their own body, not less than seven, as they may 
think proper, to be a quorum for transacting all general and 
necessary business of the said seminary, and making tempor- 
ary rules for the government of the same; and also by the 
said fundamental ordinances to delegate to the principal, vice- 
principal and professors, such powers and authorities as they 
may think best for the standing government of the said semi- 
nary, and of the execution of the ordinances and rules of the 



108 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

same; provided always, that they be not repugnant to the 
form of government, or any law of this State. 

XV. And for animating and encouraging the students of 
the said college to a laudable diligence, industry and pro- 
gress, in useful literature and science, Be it enacted, That the 
said visitors and governors, and their successors, shall by 
written mandate, under their privy seal, and the hand of 
some one of the visitors and governors to be chosen annually 
as their president, according to the ordinance to be made for 
that purpose, have full power and authority to direct the prin- 
cipal, vice-principal and professors to hold public commence- 
ments, either on stated annual days, or occasionally as the 
future ordinances of the said seminary may direct, and at 
such commencements to admit any of the students in the said 
college, or any other persons meriting the same (whose 
names shall be severally inserted in the same mandate), to 
any degree or degrees in any of the faculties, arts and 
sciences, and liberal professions, to which persons are usually 
admitted in other colleges or universities in America or 
Europe ; and it is hereby enacted, that the principal, or in case 
of his death or absence, the vice-principal, and in case of the 
death or absence of both, the senior professor who may be 
present, shall make out and sign with his name, diplomas, or 
certificates, of the admission to such degree or degrees, which 
shall be sealed with the public or greater seal of the said cor- 
poration or college, and deliver to the graduates, as honor- 
able and perpetual testimonials of such admission; which 
diplomas, if thought necessary for doing greater honor to 
such graduates, shall also be signed with the names of the 
different professors, or as many of them as can conveniently 
sign the same; provided always, that no student or students 
within the said college shall ever be admitted to any such de- 
gree or degrees, or have their name inserted in any mandate 
for a degree until such student or students have been first 
duly examined and thought wordiy of the same, at a public 
examination of candidates, to be held one whole month pre- 
vious to the day of commencement in the said college, by 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 109 

and in the presence of the said visitors and governors, or of 
such quorum of them, not less than seven, as the ordinances 
of the college may authorize for that purpose, and in the pres- 
ence of any other persons choosing to attend the same; and 
provided, further, that no person or persons, excepting the 
students belonging to the said seminary, shall ever be ad- 
mitted to any honorary or other degree or degrees in the 
same, unless thirteen of the visitors and governors (of whom 
the president shall be one) by a mandate under their privy 
seal, and signed by the hands of the whole thirteen, to the 
principal, vice-principal and professors directed, have signi- 
fied their approbation and authority for the particular ad- 
mission of such person to said degree or degrees. 

XVI. And be it enacted, That the ordinances which shall 
be, from time to time, made by the visitors and governors of 
the said college, and their successors, with an account of 
their other proceedings, and of the management of the es- 
tate and moneys committed to their trust, shall, when re- 
quired, be laid before the General Assembly, for their in- 
spection and examination; but in case at any time here- 
after, through oversight, or other\vise through misapprehen- 
sions and mistaken constructions of the powers, liberties and 
franchises, in this charter or act of incorporation granted or 
intended to be granted, any ordinance should be made by the 
said corporation of visitors and governors, or any matters 
done and transacted by the corporation, contrary to the tenor 
thereof, it is enacted that although all such ordinances, acts 
and doings, shall in themselves be null and void, yet they 
shall not, however, in any courts of law, or by the General 
Assembly, be deemed, taken, interpreted or adjudged, into 
an avoidance or forfeiture of this charter and act of incorpor- 
ation, but the same shall be and remain unhurt, inviolate 
and entire, unto the said corporation of visitors and govern- 
ors, in perpetual succession; and all their acts conformable 
to the powers, true intent and meaning hereof, shall be and 
remain in full force and validity, the nullity and avoidance of 
such illegal acts to the contrary in anywise notwithstanding. 



. 



no ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

XVII. And be it enacted, That this charter and act of in- 
corporation, and every part thereof, shall be good and avail- 
able in all things in the law according to the true intent and 
meaning thereof, and shall be construed, reputed and ad- 
judged, in all cases, most favorably on the behalf, and for the 
best benefit and behoof of the said visitors and governors, 
and their successors, so as most effectually to answer the 
valuable ends of this act of incorporation, towards the gen- 
eral advancement and promotion of useful knowledge, science 
and virtue. 

XVIII. And be it enacted. That no person shall act as 
visitor and governor, or as principal or vice-principal, or as 
professor, in the said college, before he shall take the oath of 
fidelity and support to this State required by the constitution 
or by the laws of this State. 

XIX. And, to provide a permanent fund for the further 
encouragement and establishment of the said college on the 
Western Shore, Be it enacted. That the sum of one thousand 
seven hundred and fifty pounds current money, be annually 
and forever hereafter given and granted as a donation by the 
public, to the use of the said college on the Western Shore, 
to be applied by the visitors and governors of the said college 
to the payment of salaries to the principal, professors and 
tutors of the said college. 

XX. And, as a certain and permanent fund to procure the 
said sum of one thousand seven hundred and fifty pounds 
current money annually, for the use aforesaid. Be it enacted, 
That the sum of twenty-five shillings, current money, im- 
posed by the act, entitled, An act concerning marriages, for 
every marriage license, and hereafter to be received by the 
clerks of any of the counties of the Western Shore, and paid 
by them to the treasurer of the said Shore, agreeably to the 
directions of the said act, shall remain in his hands, subject to 
the order of the visitors and governors of the said college, to 
be drawn according to the directions of this act. 

XXL And be it enacted, That every fine, penalty or for- 
feiture for any offence (except only for treason) at common 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. Ill 

law, or by any act of Assembly now in force, or hereafter to 
be made, and hereafter imposed by the general court on the 
Western Shore, or by any county court of that Shore, or any 
judge or justice of either court, and every recognizance taken 
by the general or any county court on the Western Shore, or 
any judge or justice of either of the said courts, and hereafter 
forfeited in the said general court or county court, and col- 
lected or received, shall be paid to the treasurer of the West- 
ern Shore, and shall remain in his hands, subject to the 
orders of the visitors and governors of the said college, to be 
drawn according to the directions of this act. 

XXII. And be it enacted. That the regulations and pro- 
visions made in the act of Assembly, entitled, An act for 
licensing and regulating ordinary-keepers, passed at March 
session, seventeen hundred and eighty (except such parts of 
the said act as relate to the retailing of liquors by merchants 
or store-keepers, or at horse-races) shall be and remain in 
full force forever, as to the granting licenses on the Western 
Shore (except in the city of Annapolis and the precincts 
thereof); and the money hereafter collected for ordinary li- 
censes granted on the Western Shore, and paid to the treas- 
urer of the said Shore, shall remain in his hands, subject to 
the orders of the visitors and governors of the said college, 
to be drawn according to the directions of this act. 

XXIII. And be it enacted. That every person carrying 
goods, wares or merchandises for sale, from place to place, 
shall be deemed a hawker or pedler, and after the first day of 
April next shall, before they trade, barter or sell, any goods, 
wares or merchandise, on the Western Shore, take out a li- 
cense from some county court of the said Shore, which shall 
be renewed every year; and the said county courts are hereby 
authorized and required, on application of any person of 
reputation, to grant license to such person to travel and 
trade as a hawker or pedler on the Western Shore for one 
year from the date of the said license, which license shall be 
made out by the clerk of the court under his hand and the 
seal of the county; and for every license, and the renewal 



112 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

thereof, there shall be paid six pounds current money to the 
sheriff of the county, and five shillings to the clerk of the 
court, for making out or renewing such license; and the sev- 
eral clerks are directed annually, on or before the first day of 
October to return to the treasurer of the Western Shore a list 
of licenses granted to hawkers and pedlers; and the several 
sheriffs shall annually, on or before the first day of October, 
pay all money by them received for the said licenses to the 
treasurer of the said Shore, and the same shall remain in his 
hands, subject to the orders of the visitors and governors of 
the said college, to be drawn according to this act; and if any 
hawker or pedler, after the first day of April next, shall be 
found traveling with, and exposing or offering for sale, any 
goods, wares or merchandise, on the Western Shore, without 
a license obtained as aforesaid for that purpose, such hawker 
or pedler shall, for every offence, forfeit and pay the sum of 
ten pounds current money ; and it is hereby declared to be the 
duty of every sheriff, deputy sheriff and constable, on the 
Western Shore, to examine and require any person carrying 
goods from place to place for sale, to produce a license, and 
in case of refusal, or neglect on request, to produce the same, 
to carry such person before some justice of the peace, who 
shall take a recognizance from such person, with security, to 
appear at the next county court; provided, that persons travel- 
ing with linen, hemp, flax or thread, the growth and manu- 
facture of this State, and selling or bartering the same, shall 
not be deemed hawkers or pedlers within this act. 

XXIV-XXXII. (Here follow various clauses regarding 
licenses.) 

XXXIII. And, whereas, a college hath been founded on 
the Eastern Shore of this State, by the name of Washington 
College, in honorable and perpetual memory of the late illus- 
trious and virtuous commander-in-chief of the armies of the 
United States; And, whereas, it appears to this General As- 
sembly that the connexion between the two Shores will be 
greatly increased by uniformity of manners and joint efforts 
for the advancement of literature, under one supreme legis- 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 113 

lative and visitatorial jurisdiction: Be it further enacted, That 
the said two colleges, viz., Washington College on the Eastern 
Shore, and Saint John's College on the Western Shore, shall 
be, and they are hereby declared to be, one university, by the 
name of The University of Maryland, whereof the Governor 
of the State for the time being shall be chancellor, and the 
principal of one of the said colleges shall be vice-chancellor, 
either by seniority or election, according to such rule or by- 
law of the university as may afterwards be made in that case. 
XXXIV. And, for establishing a body of by-laws or ordi- 
nances for the general government and well ordering the 
affairs of the said university, with the mutual consent, ad- 
vice and authority, of the said two colleges, Be it enacted, 
That as soon as conveniently may be after thirteen visitors 
and governors shall be chosen for Saint John's College, and 
shall have duly taken upon them the discharge of their trust, 
the chancellor shall call a meeting of the visitors and govern- 
ors of the said two colleges, or a representation of at least 
seven visitors and governors from each of them, and two 
members of the faculty of each of them (the principal when 
there is any, being one), which meeting shall be styled The 
Convocation of the University of Maryland, and at their first 
meeting (to be continued on adjournments by the chancellor) 
shall frame a body of by-laws or ordinances, the object of 
which shall be the general government of the university, so 
far as may relate to uniformity of manners and literature in 
the said colleges, the receiving, hearing and determining, 
appeals from any of the members, students or scholars, of 
either of them, the conferring the higher degrees and honors 
of the university ; which by-laws, so framed and passed by the 
said convocation, shall be binding, provided the same be not 
repugnant to the constitution or laws of this State, or in any 
manner abridge or destroy the separate and distinct rights, 
franchises and immunities, of either of the said colleges, as 
expressed, declared and granted, in their respective charters 
or acts of incorporation. 



114 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

XXXV. And be it enacted, That when a body of by-laws 
or ordinances for the government of this university shall be 
established as aforesaid, all future and annual meetings of the 
convocation of the university shall be held alternately on the 
commencement day in each college, and the chancellor, 
when present, shall preside at all such meetings, and may 
also call a special meeting when he may judge the same to be 
necessary, which special meetings shall likewise be held alter- 
nately in each college; and in the absence of the chancellor, 
the vice-chancellor shall preside in his stead; and likewise 
when the chancellor shall be present, the vice-chancellor 
shall, by his directions, preside in all scholastic exercises and 
examinations, and in conferring the literary honors of the 
university; and in the absence of the vice-chancellor, his 
place shall be supplied by such member of the faculty of 
either college as the laws in that case to be made shall pro- 
vide, or by the election of a vice-chancellor for that time. 

XXXVI. And be it enacted. That the visitors and gov- 
ernors of the said college shall lay before the General As- 
sembly at its annual meeting in November (or oftener if re- 
quired) an account in writing of all moneys by them received 
in virtue of this act, and of the salaries by them paid out of 
the said moneys, and to whom paid ; and after payment of the 
said sum of seventeen hundred and fifty pounds current 
money, the balance (if any) shall remain in the treasury, sub- 
ject to the disposal of the General Assembly. 



s^^^ 



